Key points:

  • Less than a third of US job postings on Indeed asked applicants for a specific number of years’ experience in April, down from almost 40% in April 2022.
  • Sectors including project management, accounting, and civil engineering demand a specific number of years’ experience more often, while beauty & wellness, pharmacy, and therapy occupations typically have less-defined requirements.
  • The decline in years’ experience requirements is most prominent in sectors that typically both pay more and require more education, a sign that employers may be shifting toward other hiring practices like skills-first hiring.

Employers often include experience requirements in job postings to screen for strong candidates, lower training costs, and reduce the risk of hiring unqualified workers. However, Indeed job posting data shows that mentions of experience requirements in job ads have declined in recent years, likely due to a shift in who employers want to hire and growing support for skills-first hiring. Less focus on tenure, in addition to a long-term decline in educational requirements, may give job seekers with the right skills a chance to pursue opportunities that may have previously been closed to them. 

While there are several ways to define experience requirements, this analysis focused on job postings that provide a specific number of years attached to desired qualifications. Many US job postings on Indeed mention general qualifications like “experience in nursing,” but as of April 2024, fewer than 1-in-3 (30%) US job postings included a year-specific requirement (i.e., “3+ years in a nursing role”). This share is down substantially from about 40% in April 2022. 

A line graph titled “Fewer job postings are listing desired years of experience” shows the share of US job postings that contain a year-specific experience requirement. The share has declined from about 40% in April 2022 to 30% in April 2024.
A line graph titled “Fewer job postings are listing desired years of experience” shows the share of US job postings that contain a year-specific experience requirement. The share has declined from about 40% in April 2022 to 30% in April 2024.

This shift away from asking for a specific number of years is clear across a range of job postings asking for limited and extensive experience. The share of postings asking for 2 or more years’ experience have been trending steadily downward since April 2022. Postings asking candidates to have 0-1 years’ experience rose through late 2022 and early 2023, but have since declined in line with higher-tenured requirements. 

A line graph titled “Experience requirements falling across all tenure levels” shows that the indexed share of US job postings with a year-specific experience requirement is falling for jobs with low (0-1 year), medium (2-4), and high (5+) thresholds. 
A line graph titled “Experience requirements falling across all tenure levels” shows that the indexed share of US job postings with a year-specific experience requirement is falling for jobs with low (0-1 year), medium (2-4), and high (5+) thresholds. 

The broad decline in experience requirements suggests that employers aren’t simply shifting the number of years’ experience required of applicants (from, say, 5 years to 3 years), but are instead removing those specifics altogether. In the last year alone (April 2023-April 2024), the share of published US job postings that did not include any years’ experience requirement or explicitly asked for candidates with no experience rose from 60% to 70%. It’s likely that many of these job postings still ask for an undefined amount of experience (i.e., “nursing experience preferred”), but fewer employers are emphasizing it as a specific requirement for applicants to be considered. 

Many factors may be influencing the recent decline in years’ experience requirements, but a few stood out in this analysis. First, there are clear differences in how occupational sectors leverage experience requirements and how many years’ experience they typically ask for. Second, employers and workers seem to be responding to labor market conditions and a potential shift toward skills-first hiring practices.

Years’ experience requirements vary dramatically by sector

Because the types of tasks performed and/or skills necessary to perform them vary by job, some sectors require more or less experience. Tenure requirements can also vary from sector to sector because of differences in the substance (i.e., the bare number of years asked for) and style of job postings. Some employers ask for experience in a particular occupation (data scientist, nurse, etc.), while others want candidates with time in the industry (finance, healthcare, etc.). There are also differences in whether sectors assign experience requirements to desired skills. For instance, phrases like “3+ years of Python programming” are comparatively common in tech job postings, but far more rare in retail. 

Specific years’ experience requirements are most common in job postings for sectors including project management (49% of all postings ask for some specific number of years’ experience), accounting (48%), and civil engineering (47%). Sectors with less-defined experience requirements include beauty & wellness (16% of all postings), pharmacy (20%), and therapy (21%).

A bar chart titled, “Experience requirements by occupational sector.” Bars show the share of job postings in each sector that contain year-specific experience requirements. Project management and engineering roles tend to have the highest requirements, while positions in beauty & wellness, pharmacy, and therapy typically omit experience requirements.
A bar chart titled, “Experience requirements by occupational sector.” Bars show the share of job postings in each sector that contain year-specific experience requirements. Project management and engineering roles tend to have the highest requirements, while positions in beauty & wellness, pharmacy, and therapy typically omit experience requirements.

Sectors that include experience requirements more frequently also tend to ask for more years under a candidate’s belt. Of the ten sectors with the highest overall share of postings requiring some specified number of years’ experience, seven most-often ask for a minimum of two years’ experience. Of those seven, four (project management, civil engineering, electrical engineering, and industrial engineering) most commonly ask for five or more years of experience. In contrast, one years’ experience or less was most common among all ten sectors with the lowest overall rate of year-specific requirements.

Postings with high educational requirements are driving the decline in demand for year-specific experience 

In April 2022, 66% of job postings with high education requirements (those requiring a minimum of a bachelor’s degree or higher) asked for at least some number of years’ experience, compared to 40% and 35% for the middle and lower-education categories, respectively. Since then, the gap between high- and low-education requirements has narrowed, with only 44% of high-education jobs now mentioning experience requirements (versus 29% for lower-education sectors). 

A line graph titled “Jobs with higher educational requirements are also most likely to require experience” shows that the share of US job postings with a year-specific experience requirement is falling fastest for jobs with a high education requirement. 
A line graph titled “Jobs with higher educational requirements are also most likely to require experience” shows that the share of US job postings with a year-specific experience requirement is falling fastest for jobs with a high education requirement. 

A recent Hiring Lab analysis of educational requirements found that employers are gradually removing formal schooling qualifications from job postings. A notable finding from that analysis showed that the drop in employer demand for college-educated workers was being driven largely by sectors with historically high education requirements. Banking, scientific research, and information design all top the list of sectors with the largest year-over-year drop in college degree requirements. These sectors have also recorded large declines in year-specific experience postings — each falling by more than 12 percentage points since last spring. A statistical analysis showed a strong relationship between sectors with large education requirement declines and those that are shedding tenure requirements. 

A scatterplot titled, “Experience requirements seem to be dropping most in sectors with large declines in education requirements.” The one-year percentage point change in the  % of postings requiring a 4-year degree or above is graphed on the x-axis, while the y-axis represents the one-year point change in experience requirement share in each sector. An upward-sloping line is also present, suggesting that jobs with large drops in experience requirements are also seeing sizable drops in education qualifications.  
A scatterplot titled, “Experience requirements seem to be dropping most in sectors with large declines in education requirements.” The one-year percentage point change in the  % of postings requiring a 4-year degree or above is graphed on the x-axis, while the y-axis represents the one-year point change in experience requirement share in each sector. An upward-sloping line is also present, suggesting that jobs with large drops in experience requirements are also seeing sizable drops in education qualifications.  

While there are many potential drivers behind these softening requirement trends, labor market conditions have likely had some impact. For some employers, shedding requirements may be a way to attract new workers (both those with less experience and/or longer-tenured workers willing to accept a more junior position). It’s also possible that employers are shifting their hiring preferences toward hires with less experience and education (who are also very likely to be less costly) to help control costs in a less-certain economic environment. Experience requirements in high-wage jobs have peeled back more dramatically than in lower-paying sectors. Since April 2022, year-specific experience mentions have fallen by more than 20 percentage points among high-wage sectors (from 66% to 44%) but by 10 points or less in the low (-7) and medium-wage (-10) categories. 

In addition to reflecting labor market conditions, it is also likely that other factors, including growing employer support for skills-first hiring practices, are driving the broader decline in experience requirements. One of the main drawbacks of using years’ experience as a proxy for job proficiency is that even if a candidate fulfills the year requirement, the quality of that experience is not clear. A worker who uses a skill or technology daily will likely have greater proficiency than one who uses the same tool once a month, even if they have the same number of years under their belt. 

Given the decline in both educational and experience requirements, it is reasonable to assume that employers are shifting their job postings away from traditional measures of job fit, perhaps toward the skills that are needed for the job instead. For job seekers, the changing landscape of job requirements is a sign to invest in skills and find ways to communicate proficiencies in the hiring process to pursue roles that were previously out of reach. 

Methodology

We track experience requirements by tallying US job postings on Indeed that mention one or more experience requirements in the job description as of May 10, 2024. Data is not adjusted for seasonality but is adjusted for changes in job title mix by weighting according to 2019 composition. The highest experience mentioned was used in postings with multiple requirements for simplicity. 

Statistical analysis of the relationship between the decline in education and experience requirements included a least squares regression weighted by the count of job postings (Results: p-value of 0.000009, adjusted r-squared of 0.36) and a weighted Pearson correlation analysis (0.61). 

Educational requirement tiers are based on the share of jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or above. Low, medium, and high categories are determined by calculating the Feb 2020 tercile breaks such that low requirements are those below the 33rd percentile, high are above the 66th percentile, and medium falls in between.