THE PERSONIO INDEX
Real-time workforce signals from European organisations
Every quarter, we publish anonymised, aggregated data from Personio's own customer base of 16,000+ European organisations. Read it for real numbers on what's actually changing in workforces right now.
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The Personio Index report, Q3
This page shows the headline readings. The report goes deeper: how signals vary by market and sector, full methodology, and a format built for sharing with your leadership team.
TRENDING
The trends in numbers
The Personio Index tracks headcount growth, salary budgets, recruiting activity, AI-driven workforce changes, and more.
7.9%
Headcount growth
H1 2026, down from 8.7% in 2025.
14.1%
Early-career hiring
Q3 2026, up from 12.4% in Q2 2026.
5.7%
Small business
recruiting intensity
Held flat from Q2 to Q3 2026 after last quarter's uptick.
6.3×
AI-related job
title changes
Q2 2026 versus the Q2 2024 baseline.
FEATURED TOPIC
AI workforce signals
AI-related title changes
AI-related job title changes reached 6.3× the Q2 2024 baseline by Q2 2026. One month into Q3, the index is already close to matching all of Q2 — fast, but slower than Q1-to-Q2's pace.
Generative AI skills are becoming a job requirement
Mentions of generative AI-specific skills in software engineering postings climbed from 3.2% in Q1 2024 to 24.5% by Q3 2026. Mentions across all other functions rose from 0.9% to 9.6% over the same period.
AT A GLANCE
Headline readings
Headcount growth
After peaking at 26.1% in 2022, headcount growth has cooled to 7.9% in H1 2026 — though the pace of decline is starting to level out.
Working models
Onsite work has grown from 20.8% of job postings in H2 2022 to 34.6% in H1 2026, as hybrid and remote working lose ground.
Early-career hiring
After falling to a low of 10.2% in Q2 2025, postings for entry-level and student roles have climbed to 14.1% by Q3 2026 — a tentative sign of recovery.
Q2's questions, answered
Our Q2 report raised some important questions. Here's what the new data tells us.
Does the recent uptick in medium and large company recruiting intensity hold beyond March?
No. Recruiting intensity for medium and large organisations has stayed flat and low through H1 2026, with no sustained rebound.
Do salary budgets show further compression or begin to re-accelerate?
They compressed further. Salary bands are settling into a tighter range at a lower level: upper-quartile budgets saw the steepest decline, but lower-quartile budgets saw the biggest relative drop.
Is hiring growth broadening beyond tech and professional services?
Partially. Education and public administration recruiting activity is starting to rebound — though it's too early to say if that's a sustained trend or a cyclical one.
Does the pace of AI-related job title changes continue to accelerate?
It's slowing. The index kept climbing into Q3 2026, but growth has eased: Q2 2026 had already overtaken all of Q1, while one month into Q3, the figure is just shy of matching all of Q2.
WHAT WE'RE WATCHING NEXT
The Q3 data raises these questions
In Q4, we'll answer them with new data.
Is headcount growth settling at a new baseline, or will it start to pick back up?
Will early-career job postings keep recovering, or was the Q3 uptick a blip?
Will generative AI skill mentions outside software engineering start to catch up?
How will salary increase budgets shift into next quarter?
About our data
The Personio Index draws on aggregated, anonymised data from Personio's European customer base of 16,000+ organisations.
No customer- or employee-identifiable information is published. Findings reflect directional signals within our dataset — not representative commentary on the European workforce as a whole.
Read the Q3 reportPrevious reports
Catch up on past editions of The Personio Index.
Read the Q2 reportNew reports get appended to this list each quarter as they publish.