And if the first six months have taught us anything, it's that hiring is changing faster than most companies are ready to admit.

Some of what happened this year was expected. Some of it was a slow burn that finally caught fire. And one number in particular stopped me cold when I saw it.

I want to walk you through the five biggest stories from the first half of the year.

Then I'll share four of my biggest predictions for the 2nd half that every founder and hiring leader needs to be thinking about right now.

Let's get into it.

Nobody was surprised that AI-generated candidates were becoming a problem... What was shocking was how far it had already gone.

In fact, 41% of large enterprises have already hired a fraudulent candidate. Not almost hired. Hired, onboarded and employed.

Gartner projects that by 2028 one in four candidate profiles globally will be fake. The FBI and DOJ documented North Korean IT workers who used stolen identities and AI-generated personas to get hired inside over 130 US companies!

The fraud is not coming. It's here. And most companies have no way to detect it.

Everyone said 2026 was the year AI would transform recruiting. The data tells a different story.

92% of CHROs entered the year planning to expand AI in HR. By mid-year only 39% had done it. Of those who did, and only 8% say it's actually meeting their expectations.

Companies are talking fast and moving slow. The ones quietly building real systems are pulling ahead.

The best way to describe the first half of 2026 is low hire, low fire.

Hires dropped from 5.3 million to 4.8 million.

Job openings fell to 6.9 million. Unemployment hit 4.3%.

Companies did not collapse. But they got selective.

Volume hiring gave way to precision hiring. Meaning, fewer roles, higher standards, more spent per seat.

Software developer jobs for workers aged 22 to 25 fell nearly 20% from 2024.

43% of US college graduates aged 22 to 27 are now underemployed. Entry-level job postings dropped 29% since January 2024.

AI is not just changing how companies hire. It's changing who they hire and for what.

Junior roles in tech, customer service and accounting are disappearing faster than the market can absorb the people trained for them.

52% of talent leaders say office mandates are hurting their ability to recruit and 73% say remote roles are easier to fill.

This is not a culture debate anymore. It's a data point.

Companies enforcing full return to office are handing candidates to competitors willing to offer flexibility.

So what will have started as a fraud prevention measure wil become standard practice.

Google has already brought back mandatory in-person rounds for all candidates; McKinsey followed.
And 72% of recruiting leaders now require at least one in-person round to verify who they are actually talking to.

By end of 2026 I expect this to be the norm.

The companies that kept a human verification step in their process will have cleaner pipelines and fewer bad hires. The ones who automated everything are going to have a very uncomfortable 2nd half.

Companies moved fast on AI screening tools.

Most did not test for bias
Many did not document their decisions
And very few built the compliance frameworks regulators are now asking for.

The legal reckoning is coming.

The EU AI Act's August 2026 deadline requires documented human oversight for any AI used in hiring decisions.
US states are moving the same direction. The companies that used AI screening as a shortcut are about to find out what that cost them.

In a precision hiring market, A-players have options. They always will.

What's changing is how they choose.

Compensation matters. But the companies winning the best candidates in the 2nd half of 2026 will be the ones with a story worth joining. A culture worth showing up for. A mission that means something.

The hiring media kit I've shared with clients for years will no longer be a ‘nice-to-have’… It will be a requirement to win talent.

If a candidate can't find a compelling reason to choose you in five minutes of research, you've already lost them.

In a low-hire, low-fire market, companies fight harder to keep their good people when those people start looking elsewhere.

Counter-offers are getting more creative, more expensive and harder to walk away from.

Expect this. The moment your best candidate hands in their notice, their current employer is going to fight for them in a way they never did before.

This is exactly why the counter-offer conversation has to happen early, not at the offer stage.

If you have not read Issue 007, now is the time. The full framework for handling this is there.

Why Candidates Ghost... And How to Stop It Before It Happens

Pick one of these four predictions and ask yourself honestly.

Is your company ready for it?
Not in theory. In practice. Right now.

If the answer is no, that is your next move.

The 2nd half of 2026 will reward the companies that got ahead of these shifts and punish the ones that did not.

The first half of 2026 was a stress test. The 2nd half is a test of whether companies learned anything from it.

The fundamentals have not changed. Find great people, build real relationships, run a process worth respecting.

See you next Tuesday.

Jared Black,
Founder, The Hire-archy

P.S. Which of these trends hit closest to home for your business?

And which prediction worries you most heading into the 2nd half?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.