Geopolitical and military conflicts, historically high salary budget increases and recessionary threats have afflicted the job market in the past few years. The latest – and possibly most significant – event is the impact of explosive growth in generative AI applications.
Each disruption has created a demand for concomitant jobs. Even with targeted layoffs and the threat of recession, hot and high-demand jobs still exist. Compensation and HR professionals need to know which jobs those are in light of prevailing market and economic conditions to effectively formulate competitive and cost-effective compensation strategies.
WTW has developed a systemic methodology to identify which jobs are hot and quantify how hot an individual job is, then supplements traditional metrics (e.g., job with the highest pay) across several dimensions:
We consider jobs to be hot when they rank among the top 15% across several individual indicators. In addition to the four metrics noted, the methodology also includes a combined heat indicator that incorporates all four dimensions into a single metric.
Applying our methodology to data from our 2021, 2022 and 2023 General Industry Middle Management, Professional and Support (MMPS) surveys revealed the top five jobs (see Figure 1).
| Rank | Combined heat | Top pay increase | Top sustained increase | Top surge in demand | Top paying disciplines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Technology strategy | General operations management (manufacturing) | Information and cyber security strategy | Secretarial/ executive administrative assistance | geophysics |
| 2 | Site reliability engineering | Employment law | General outsourcing management | Corporate development and licensing generalist/ multidiscipline | Employment law |
| 3 | Supplier diversity program management | Secretarial/executive administrative assistance | Technology strategy | E-commerce management generalist/multidiscipline | Legal generalist/ multidiscipline |
| 4 | Product development - creative/industrial design | Merchandising | Merchandising | Information and cyber security strategy | Machine learning |
| 5 | Artificial intelligence applications | Aviation operations | Employment law | Artificial intelligence applications | Artificial intelligence applications |
It is rare for a discipline to be hot in every dimension. However, as shown in Figure 1, technology strategy and artificial intelligence are among the top five across multiple dimensions. Our 2024 Hot and High-Demand Jobs Report includes an extended list of the top 10 disciplines for each dimension.
In addition to identifying which disciplines are hot across multiple dimensions, it also is interesting to see the year-over-year changes to the list of hot disciplines. In the 3 years we have published the Hot and High-Demand Jobs Report, these jobs made the top 10 list every year in at least two heat dimensions each year.
| Combined heat | Top pay increase | Top sustained pay increase | Top surge in demand | Top paying discipline | |||||||||||
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Artificial intelligence | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||||
| Info and cyber strategy | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||||
| Technology/digital product owner | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||||||||
| Technology strategy | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||||
| User experience | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||||
Tight labor markets, inflationary pressures and employee retention concerns have fueled salary increases to rates not seen in nearly two decades. In 2022 and 2023, average actual salary increases in the United States were 4.2% and 4.4%, respectively, which is significantly higher than the 2.7% to 3.0% range for salary increases since 2010.
To manage compensation costs and achieve maximum return, organizations need to be extremely thoughtful, even conservative, about changes they make. Avoid making changes – like broad salary increases – that will be difficult to maintain if there is an economic downturn. Instead, focus on creating a segmented compensation strategy for various employee populations and allocate spend to attract and retain critical skills. Our analysis indicates that the top 15% highest pay-increase disciplines typically dominate annual salary increase dollars (see Figure 3).
| Heat tier | P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | P5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 5% | 17% | 16% | 20% | 14% | 17% |
| Top 10% | 12% | 12% | 12% | 12% | 12% |
| Top 15% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% |
| Other | 3% | 3% | 3% | 5% | 4% |
Annual incentives often are used to retain talent with critical and high-demand skills. This is reflected in our data, with disciplines in the top heat tiers showing significantly higher actual bonuses. Figure 4 shows us, for example, that the bonus for a job at the P3 career level that is in the top 5% is $11,000 compared to $9,000 for jobs not in the top 15%.
Note that annual incentive is just one aspect; our methodology looks at multiple dimensions to determine heat. In some instances (such as at the P3 level), other heat dimensions such as surges in demand or higher base pay increases may drive a job’s heat more than annual incentives.
| Heat tier | P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | P5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 5% | 5,000 | 7,000 | 11,000 | 18,000 | 37,000 |
| Top 10% | 5,000 | 7,000 | 9,000 | 16,000 | 34,000 |
| Top 15% | 3,000 | 6,000 | 10,000 | 16,000 | 26,000 |
| Other | 4,000 | 6,000 | 9,000 | 15,000 | 23,000 |
Without a structured quantification of the heat felt around individual jobs, compensation and HR professionals have no way to differentiate – or defend – their programs in response to objectively measurable hot jobs. By identifying market heat early, you can put mitigation strategies in place (e.g., hiring early, upskilling current employees). And detecting market heat around certain jobs will be critical as the talent market continues reshaping itself in a new business landscape.
