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 June 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 34% - representing 56 million workers – engaged in some type of job-seeking activity during the past 90 days. This represents a notable increase over the prior rate of 27%. The uptick is not due to a single factor, but rather a likely combination of seemingly contradictory perceptions – some positive, such as optimism around the direction of the economy, and some negative, such as concerns around job security or actual layoffs. Many job seekers considered opportunities in the same field where they currently work and in different fields that would entail a career change.
More so than other cohorts, the data indicates Gen Z applied to jobs online at a lower rate (62% current period vs. 70% prior period), while increasing the rate of searching for information around training to build new skills (37% current period vs. 29% period). This may reflect a degree of frustration in applying for countless jobs without success, shifting to a strategy of boosting skills to improve chances.
Despite the ups and downs of news headlines, job seekers remain generally optimistic about employment prospects. When translating job seeker ratings of the state of the job market to a score, the calculation yields an average of 58, a slight improvement over the prior survey wave score of 56. For transitions into new careers, job seekers continue to rate industry-recognized certifications as the most viable stepping stone to improving their prospects without a four-year degree.
Job seekers across the demographic spectrum rate the critical importance of digital skills and career readiness in today’s labor market. The net 88% rating of 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 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. Nearly four in ten believe AI will be both a positive and a threat to jobs and wages. In comparison, equal percentages (21%) rate AI as a positive or a threat to jobs and wages.
The Skills Intent segment represents the segment of the market placing the highest priority on skills development to advance and/or avoid falling behind with their skills toolkit. Forty-nine percent of non-job seekers.
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 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 details.
Methodology
CompTIA’s Job Seeker Trends study was conducted via a quantitative survey fielded online during June 16 -24, 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=2,024 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 administered 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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