CompTIA’s Job Seeker Trends provides insights into job seekers' desired career pathways and the strategies they use to advance to the next stage of their career journey. This wave of research was conducted in January 2025. A total of 1,000 U.S. job seekers and 1,000 U.S. non-job seekers participated in the study, for a total of 2,000 respondents.
Across the U.S. labor market, approximately 27% —representing nearly 45 million workers—engaged in some type of job-seeking activity during the past 90 days. This rate remains consistent with prior waves of the research. Many job seekers considered opportunities in the same field where they currently work and in different fields that would entail a career change.
Despite the ups and downs of news headlines, job seekers remain generally optimistic about employment prospects. Six in 10 job seekers rate the current hiring environment as "average," "somewhat strong," or "very strong," though this is a slight decline from 64% in January 2024. There was a slight pullback in certain career pursuits, but all things considered, the data suggests job seekers believe the labor market continues to provide employment opportunities.
Job seeker consideration across career fields was roughly in line with the previous iteration of this study. Technology career consideration was unchanged and remains a top 4 selection among job seekers.
For transitions into new careers, job seekers continue to rate industry-recognized certification as the most viable stepping stone to improving their prospects without a four-year degree. The data confirms there remains much work to do to address the confidence gap and reduce real and perceived barriers to pursuing a career in technology.
Job seekers across the demographic spectrum rate the critical importance of digital skills and career readiness in today’s labor market. The net 89% rating digital skills as important to any career pursuit reflects the past and future phases of the digital transformation of economies around the world.
Of note, artificial intelligence (AI) fundamentals quickly made their way onto the list of top perceived digital skills. While all fundamental skills are interconnected, whereby one builds on another to achieve outcomes in the workplace, AI’s emergence as a fundamental skill confirms the pervasive interest among employers and workers. Forty percent of job seekers view AI as both a positive and a potential threat to jobs and wages.
The Skills Intent segment represents the segment of the market placing the highest priority on skills development to advance in their careers and/or avoid falling behind with their skills toolkit. Forty-eight percent of non-job seekers fall into this category, with digital fluency, project management, and technical skills such as cybersecurity, cloud, and coding are among the most valued skills for career growth.
Please note this is an excerpt, and the full report contains more detail.
Methodology
CompTIA’s Job Seeker Trends study was conducted via a quantitative survey fielded online from December 19, 2024 – January 17, 2025. The data was weighted to approximate a target sample of U.S. adults based on gender, educational attainment, age, race, and region. The full survey sample of n=2,002 was evenly segmented between active job seekers and non-seekers. The n=1,000 segmentations have an approximate margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.
The survey was administrated by the research firm Morning Consult.
Within the context of this study, job seekers are defined as adults who have looked for a new job within their current or most recent career field or explored new jobs in a different career field in the past 3 months. Note: the data suggests some respondents interpreted ‘new career’ pathway as a new job role within an existing field (e.g. transitioning from an IT support role to a cybersecurity role). Overall, this had little effect on the key themes of the findings.
CompTIA, Inc. is a member of the market research industry’s Insights Association and adheres to its internationally respected Code of Standards. Any questions regarding the study should be directed to CompTIA Research and Market Intelligence staff at research@comptia.org.
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