Data insights

The Most In-Demand Jobs on LinkedIn Right Now

Photo of a doctor smiling at a baby during a check-up.

The global healthcare sector needs a heavy dose of talent, stat — at least, that’s the diagnosis according to LinkedIn’s latest talent stats. 

Healthcare roles represent six out of the top 10 jobs with the fastest-growing demand, as measured by LinkedIn’s data on paid job posts over the past six months. Healthcare aside, businesses are also struggling to fill their own prescriptions for more administrative and customer-facing roles. For all that and more, let’s take a closer examination. 

What are the most in-demand jobs right now?

Whether you’re recruiting for these roles in particular or simply curious about broader labor market trends, read on for the full rankings and reflections on the most in-demand jobs.

This story is updated on a quarterly basis to help talent professionals manage expectations, inform hiring decisions, and understand the changing landscape of the talent market.

Jobs with the fastest-growing demand: healthcare and admin roles

The global staffing shortage in healthcare is a chronic issue that’s grown into a full-blown crisis: The World Health Organization predicts a shortfall of 10 million health workers by 2030. Perhaps it’s not surprising then to see that most of the roles with the fastest-growing demand fall within the healthcare space. 

Jobs with the Fastest-Growing Demand (QoQ)

Roles with the greatest quarter-over-quarter increase in share of paid job posts, Q4 (October 1 – December 31) 2023 vs. Q3 (July 1 – September 30) 2023 

  1. Care Specialist
  2. Surgical Technician
  3. Tax Preparer
  4. Medical Surgical Nurse
  5. Secretary
  6. Sonographer
  7. Progressive Care Nurse
  8. Home Health Licensed Practical Nurse
  9. Customer Associate
  10. Business Administrator

Though this shortage was certainly exacerbated by the pandemic, it’s also being driven by an aging global population — which is why demand is likely to continue rising over the next several years. 

As an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) report recently noted, healthcare and social assistance jobs are projected to make up nearly half (45%) of all the new jobs created in the U.S. by 2032, with a comparable surge predicted for Canada. The medical journal The Lancet recently declared that “Europe is in the middle of a health workforce crisis.” And the prognosis is especially concerning for poorer countries across the globe, where qualified health workers are increasingly migrating to richer countries.

There’s no magic pill to fix this crisis; any solutions will have to deal with both developing talent (that is, training more new health workers) and staunching the loss of existing workers facing burnout amid poor compensation. If you’re a talent professional trying to hire health workers, offering competitive compensation and supportive benefits can help address these pain points head-on.  

Aside from healthcare, roles like secretary and business administrator also saw substantially higher demand in recent months — bucking, at least for the moment, widespread speculation that AI advances would quickly make these roles obsolete

Most in-demand jobs overall: customer-facing roles stay hot, software demand swings back

Customer-facing roles continue to be a major presence on our current list of the most in-demand jobs overall, as measured by the number of LinkedIn paid job posts over the past three months. 

Notably, many of these roles (such as retail salesperson, store manager, cashier) are explicitly in-person — a confluence of two trends we’ve tracked for several quarters: customer service as an increasingly in-demand skill and the higher premium put on in-person work since the pandemic. Cashiers, in particular, could be seeing a spike in demand due to the growing backlash against self-checkout technology. 

Most In-Demand Jobs (Q4 2023)

Roles with the greatest number of paid LinkedIn job posts, Q4 (October 1 – December 31) 2023

  1. Salesperson (no change in rank vs. previous quarter) 
  2. Retail Salesperson (+1)
  3. Registered Nurse (+1)
  4. Software Engineer (+1)
  5. Project Manager (+1)
  6. Customer Service Representative (-4)
  7. Store Manager (+3)
  8. 8. Full Stack Engineer (+6)
  9. Cashier (+6)
  10. Driver (-2)

In contrast, two of the roles that rose in our latest rankings could be done remotely, yet still command high demand: software and full stack engineers. After falling in rank for two consecutive quarters, software engineers return to the top four, while full stack engineers (those who can work on both the frontend and backend side of things) jumped six spots to crack the top ten. 

Final thoughts

Competing for the most in-demand candidates will always be difficult, whether you’re hoping to hire healthcare workers, build out your customer service teams, or attract engineering talent. But familiarizing yourself with the latest trends and insights can help you set realistic expectations and adjust your offers accordingly. And to make things a bit easier, you can check out LinkedIn’s detailed hiring guides with free resources to help you build a healthy workforce. 

Methodology

Based on global LinkedIn data on all premium job posts from July 2023 up to and including December 2023. The most in-demand jobs are those with the highest number of job posts in the most recent quarter (October 1 – December 31, 2023). The jobs with the fastest-growing demand are those with the greatest growth rate, with growth rate calculated by the share of job posts in the most recent quarter relative to the previous quarter (July 1 – September 30, 2023). Roles with fewer than 1,000 job posts in either quarter and roles for which the majority of job posts come from a single company were excluded from this analysis. 

Over the previous quarter, LinkedIn data teams made improvements to the backend to ensure accuracy. Due to these updates occurring within the timeframe of this analysis, precise figures for quarter-over-quarter growth have been omitted, with growth numbers to return in future editions.

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