In the United States, white-collar job seekers are increasingly requesting so-called ‘reverse recruiting’, paying headhunters to obtain positions. As the hiring freeze continues and applicants become more desperate, analysts say even the traditional hiring structure is being turned on its head.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 9th (local time) that “recruiters have traditionally searched for talent on behalf of companies, in boom times and bust alike, but a change has appeared recently,” and that “in an increasingly competitive job market, more job seekers are paying a new kind of hiring specialist known as ‘reverse recruiters’.” In other words, a reversal has emerged in which it is job seekers, not companies, who are paying in the contest for positions.

Most reverse recruiting services work by having job seekers pay the firm and, if they secure a position, remit a portion of their salary as a fee. Some firms submit resumes to companies on behalf of applicants and collect a fee. Former job seeker Daniel Bejarano told WSJ that he found a job through the reverse recruiting platform ‘Repher’ and, once his first month salary was deposited, paid 20% as a fee. ‘Repher’ offers artificial intelligence (AI) agent services to job seekers from the top twenty universities, and the number of new users rose from a daily average of 10 last August to 50 now.

WSJ pointed out that this trend is one sign that white-collar job seekers are facing growing difficulties in the hiring market. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, new jobs last year totaled 584,000, the lowest since 2020. As of the end of last year, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of unemployed exceeded the number of job openings, and the average job-search duration approached six months. WSJ also reported that, as restructuring continued at major technology and logistics companies including Amazon, thousands of white-collar workers flooded into the job market.

WSJ analyzed that multiple factors are contributing to the ongoing chill in the U.S. labor market: companies delaying hiring due to uncertainty stemming from the Trump administration tariff policy and immigration enforcement, excess headcount at information technology (IT) firms that hired aggressively during the pandemic, and a tendency among workers to avoid quitting or changing jobs in a more precarious market. Greg Daco, chief economist at consulting firm EY-Parthenon, assessed that “the labor market is completely frozen right now.”

Kevin Hassett, chairman of the White House National Economic Council, said in a CNBC interview that “gross domestic product (GDP) growth and the outward departure of undocumented immigrants could combine to slow the pace of job gains,” while adding that “because the situation is unusual, there is no need to panic even if lower-than-usual employment figures are released in succession.” The point is that productivity has increased and, with population reduced by the Trump administration immigration policy, the unemployment rate can remain stable even if the number of jobs does not grow as much as in the past.

Reuters reported that debate over the causes of the hiring slowdown is also taking place at the Federal Reserve, the central bank, and is expected to have a significant impact on future Federal Reserve policy decisions.