This article offers a comprehensive analysis of data collected from the American labour market, with valuable insights also applicable to India’s labor market.
Indeed research shows a mismatch in remote work, pay, hiring norms and more. The result is a painful divide — but there are ways to close the gap.
Key Takeaways
- Younger workers are less likely to settle, and they will take note of bad employer behavior.
- While a growing number of employers are engaging in pay transparency practices, half of job listings still make no mention of pay, and three-quarters of jobseekers say they want pay transparency.
- The jobseeker journey feels impossible for nearly 50% of workers, and many of them feel they must jump through hoops for little in return.
Matthew Vanatta had been in the job market for eight months. Then opportunity struck — twice. The content designer had the choice between two different roles: one that required five days a week in the office and another that paid less but was remote. He took the second one.
“I know there is a lot of nuance around the push to get back into the office, but being in the office five days is not advantageous to my working style,” he says.
Though it meant less money, it was an easy choice for him. “My priorities have shifted, and I am no longer willing to sacrifice personal well-being for a larger paycheck.”
He is not alone. The Great Resignation may be over, but the record number of people quitting their jobs in 2021 and 2022 has been replaced by a gap between what jobseekers want and what employers provide. These discrepancies have surfaced so frequently in Indeed’s surveys and research that it has become an undeniable trend we are calling the Great Disconnect — a chasm between jobseekers and employers as they find themselves at odds over remote work, pay, diversity and inclusion, and more.
“COVID changed many of the expectations the current workforce has. Companies are going to continue to grapple with that,” says Lori Aiken, Indeed VP of Global Talent Management. “What will the future look like? What is our new normal?”
Some of these disconnects are new — people often did not consider remote work as an option before the pandemic, and better communication tools brought it to many workplaces. Others are historically entrenched. But they all seem to be amplified in this current era, even as employers and jobseekers feel their way around trying to close the gap.
Gallup research shows that nearly 60% of workers are “psychologically disengaged” at their jobs. A browse through social media is likely to reveal a robust scroll of discontent as people express frustration with return-to-office mandates, weak leadership or a meandering candidate process. “I receive probably a hundred direct messages a day from people who need to vent. Some are employed, some are job seeking, but all are fed up,” says Melissa Grabiner, a senior talent acquisition leader.
Companies are still struggling to keep up with the social and economic changes in the past four years, says Eoin Driver, Indeed VP, Global Talent. “The result is that companies need to pivot their priorities on a more regular basis, and those pivots are far more extreme than what we have historically experienced. It is a big contributor to the Great Disconnect.”
Employers need to have a strong understanding of what these disconnects are. We dove into a well of original Indeed data to identify the biggest ones. These are the key patterns we uncovered.
Workers will not sacrifice flexibility, but some employers are not so flexible.
Workers consistently express a desire for flexibility in where, when and how they work. Indeed’s 2024 Workforce Insights Report found that only 23% of jobseekers preferred to work exclusively on-site, and 74% wanted some kind of partial or exclusive remote option. A lack of hybrid or remote work options was a dealbreaker for a fifth of workers, and more than half of respondents said it was at least something they would “really appreciate” having.
Meanwhile, the past year has been characterised by return-to-office announcements from Google to Goldman Sachs, and office occupancy rates have been creeping back up. While many young workers, especially those just starting their careers as interns, say in-office collaboration is beneficial to them, they are resistant to hard five-day-per-week mandates that are at odds with the freedoms many workers say they want. Some employees have opted to quit rather than return to the office.
However, the data surprisingly shows that jobseekers and employers are actually fairly well aligned on this front: According to Indeed Hiring Lab data, in March 2024, 8.2% of job searches on Indeed contained keywords related to remote work. Though this is a slight drop from a high of 10.2% in January 2023, before the pandemic, this percentage was under 2.5%. As of March 2024, a similar portion of job ads mentioned remote or hybrid terms (explore more on the Hiring Lab portal).
That means employers are offering what people want, right? To a degree, yes — but the edges of the disconnect are somewhat jagged, it turns out.
If a jobseeker is looking for a particular type of flexibility, an employer may lose out to a competitor that offers something that works better for their needs and lifestyle.
Furthermore, after pay and benefits, work flexibility was the biggest factor that motivated people to search for jobs, according to the 2024 Workforce Insights Report. Hiring Lab data shows that flexibility is especially important for female jobseekers, as employed women are 25% more likely than employed men to say that a desire for remote work was a reason for starting a new job search.
“If I am back in the office, then my week becomes my job,” says Grabiner, who has worked remotely for five years. “I leave home early, I come home late. Then it is rinse and repeat for 30 years. People do not want to settle for that anymore.”
The takeaway: “I won’t say that any company insisting on an in-person workforce is getting it wrong,” Aiken says. “But smart companies are providing options over mandates.”
Pay transparency can be a dealbreaker for jobseekers, but some employers still seem hesitant to embrace it.
Jobseekers today want pay transparency: 75% said they are more likely to apply for a job if the salary was listed. Recent Indeed research found that jobseekers said salary ranges/compensation structure was the top “neglected job-related content” in job ads, according to an international survey.
Not seeing a salary range was the biggest reason jobseekers discarded an application, according to Indeed’s 2024 Workforce Insights Report. And 74% of jobseekers look at salary information before they consider anything else. Listing compensation information is a low-effort way for companies to earn the trust of jobseekers.
Indeed Hiring Lab research shows the portion of postings that list pay information has grown over the past few years, and a majority of HR and talent attraction leaders said in a 2022 survey that pay transparency has been “definitely” or “mostly” worthwhile.
The takeaway: “To enhance hiring success, recruitment teams and employers should prioritise pay transparency early in the process and address this issue at the company more broadly,” Driver says.
Yes, the hiring process needs to be thorough, but jobseekers think it is too complex.
Upload, send and then wait. And wait. And wait. That is the experience of countless job candidates as they fire off applications into the abyss.
Meanwhile, hiring managers often want the process to be thorough so they don’t waste time on candidates that ultimately are not a good fit. As a result, when candidates do hear back from a recruiter, they often face a daunting interview process.
According to Indeed’s 2024 Workforce Insights Report, 49% of workers surveyed agreed that most job application processes are too long and complicated. Some even say that the job-seeking process is “out of control,” with applicants having to do hours of unpaid work and pass many rounds of interviews to move forward. (After all, often what a jobseeker wants — a job, as soon as possible — is inherently at odds with an employer’s need to make the right decision.)
“Companies just do not appreciate the negative impact the traditional application process has on a candidate,” says Indeed’s Driver. “Especially the impact a lengthy and complex interview process has on the overall candidate experience.”
Even when candidates jump through hoops, they are often greeted with silence at the end of their journey. Indeed’s 2023 Ghosting in Hiring report found that 40% of U.S. jobseekers were ghosted after second or third interviews and 41% were ghosted after receiving a verbal offer from an employer.
The takeaway: “There’s an obvious opportunity to make hiring more efficient, more candidate friendly,” Driver says.
Smart companies are listening — and adapting.
Part of what may be driving the push and pull of the employer-jobseeker disconnect is a generational shift. Younger workers seem less likely to settle.
Among younger workers, “bad employer behaviour gets noticed,” according to an Indeed report that studied Gen Z, and negative ratings and reviews were the second-likeliest deal breaker for Gen Z applicants, with 32% citing them as a turnoff.
“I think a difference between Gen Zers and other generations is that we’re not afraid to stand up and speak our mind,” says Eckstein, who graduated from college in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. “We have access to tools like Glassdoor, and we can post on social media.”
Aiken encourages employers to get ahead of the curve.
“There is this growing population of professionals graduating from college, and they are very discerning,” Aiken says. “They know to ask questions like, ‘what is your current DEI strategy?’ That’s something that used to be unheard of. Companies need to meet those evolving expectations.”
And those expectations are high: 93% of workers believe it is possible to be fully satisfied by a job, according to the 2023 Indeed Work Well-being report.
“Saying ‘it is what it is’ does not work anymore,” Aiken says. “The cost of disengagement is far-reaching, and smart companies know this. So they are listening and adapting.”
For more tips and in-depth strategies on how to close the gaps between what jobseekers and employees want and what employers offer, read The Great Disconnect Part 2.
Read More:
These are not the only disconnects between employers and jobseekers (and workers). A few others:
- Attitudes toward AI. There is a notable disparity between how employers and jobseekers view AI.
- The DEI disconnect. While many companies are distancing themselves from DEI initiatives because of a backlash, research shows that the majority of Gen Z and millennial workers prefer companies that make DEI a priority.
- The gender gap. For women, the gender pay gap is real and persistent, and only 36% reported in an Indeed survey being satisfied with the actions their employer has taken to close that gap.
Indeed Research Cited in this Story:
Indeed 2024 Workforce Insights Report
Work Well-being 2023 Report: How Thriving People Create Thriving Companies
Transparency by the Numbers: An Indeed Special Report
Pay Transparency Is Now in a Majority of US Job Postings—With More Growth to Come
