Major employers are signaling that the hiring slowdown of 2025 isn’t going away anytime soon. According to The Wall Street Journal, many large companies plan to keep their headcounts steady—or even trim them—in 2026, citing a desire to stay lean while relying increasingly on technology to take on more tasks. Job site Indeed reportedly expects only minimal hiring growth for the year, and firms like Shopify and Chime Financial plan to keep employment levels flat.
That restrained approach echoes broader sentiment throughout the job market. Addison Group, a national recruiting and consulting firm, wrote that “many organizations are approaching growth more cautiously,” ushering in what it described as a period of careful decision-making for both employers and candidates.
Data also points to an unusual feature of this labor cycle: rising long-term unemployment without an official recession. Historically, the share of people unemployed for 15 weeks or more—and especially those without work for at least 27 weeks—surges during downturns and falls afterward. But since late 2022, those percentages have been climbing despite stable economic growth, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Recruiting and staffing firm Robert Half noted that while “high expectations for change are typical at the start of a new year,” early signals suggest that the first half of 2026 will bring “a continuation of the more measured hiring environment we saw in 2025.” Addison Group attributed that restraint to a combination of economic uncertainty, rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, and shifting worker demographics.
At a recent Yale School of Management CEO meeting discussed by The Wall Street Journal, two-thirds of chief executives said they planned to either maintain or shrink their workforces in 2026. Only one-third expected to expand hiring. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, who attended the meeting, reportedly observed, “We’re close to zero job growth. That’s not a healthy labor market.” He added that many CEOs told him they were pausing hiring to assess which jobs could be replaced—or transformed—by AI.
For commercial real estate investors, particularly those in office and retail sectors, slowing job creation could mean weaker demand for space and a more cautious year ahead.
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