Key Points:
- Despite rising anti-immigration sentiments and tightening immigration policies globally, foreign job seeker interest — measured by the proportion of clicks on job postings by job seekers abroad — remained resilient in the post-pandemic period until late 2024.
- Global foreign job seeker interest peaked in mid-2023 and declined sharply beginning in August 2024, nearly returning to pre-pandemic levels by March 2025.
- The pace and timing of changes in foreign job seeker interest vary by country, reflecting the impact of domestic policies.
- In the United States, foreign job seeker interest trended downward beginning in August 2023.
The share of job seekers worldwide looking at jobs outside their home countries rose steadily throughout the immediate post-pandemic years, peaking in the summer of 2023 and staying elevated for much of the following year. But beginning in August 2024 and continuing into early 2025, global job seeker interest in jobs abroad plummeted — at the same time as labor markets worldwide continued to cool and global political preferences for more restrictive immigration were on the rise.
Trends over the past five years show that shifts in foreign job searches often signal how workers feel about their local economies, their governments, and tightening immigration policies abroad. After the pandemic, more people may have felt the grass was greener elsewhere, increasing interest in foreign work. But by late 2024, the rise of immigrant-skeptic political parties worldwide may have helped quickly dampen that interest.
Foreign job seeker interest (measured as the share of total clicks on Indeed job postings in a given country by job seekers with IP addresses outside of that country) rose from 2.2% in March 2020 to a global peak in mid-2023 of 3.5%. However, this rise has since fully reversed. Between August 2024 and March 2025, the share plunged from a relatively stable 3.4% to a post-pandemic low of 2.3%.
Which jobs are driving the decline?
Foreign job seeker interest in architecture and many STEM jobs dropped the most between March 2024 and March 2025. Even so, these roles still ranked among the occupations with the highest share of international clicks over this period, highlighting their dominant role in shaping global foreign job seeker trends. Because these occupations consistently attract the largest volume of international interest, even relatively moderate declines in international clicks can drive outsized drops in overall foreign job seeker interest.
Notably, other jobs that typically require higher education also experienced the most significant drops, suggesting that the reduction in cross-border search activity may be more concentrated among white-collar professions.
Country case studies
Indeed’s cross-border job search data has previously been found to correlate with actual OECD migration data, suggesting it may serve as a real-time indicator of potential migration flows. To better understand how these global trends have played out in individual countries, we examined foreign job seeker interest in the United States, Germany, Canada, and Australia. Over the past five years, each country has exhibited varying levels of overall economic performance and tolerance towards foreign workers.
United States
Foreign job seeker interest in U.S. job postings followed a clear upward trajectory beginning in mid-2021, roughly when the post-pandemic labor market boom began in the U.S. This interest peaked in August 2023 at 2.4% before steadily declining. By March 2025, it had fallen to 1.7%. The downward trend could be a response from foreign job seekers to the significant rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric during the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, and/or to the rapid shifts to immigration policy that have marked the first few months of the new administration.
The volume of raw clicks from job seekers abroad per month followed similar trends, peaking in August 2023 before trending downwards. By December 2024, monthly foreign click counts had fallen to their lowest level in three years.
Notably, the lifting of Title 42 in May 2023 — a public health order originally implemented in 2020 in response to the pandemic — was not followed by substantial growth in inbound job searches. Title 42 permitted the U.S. to expel unauthorized immigrants, including asylum seekers, to Mexico. Before it was lifted, almost 3 million asylum seekers and other migrants arriving at U.S. borders without prior authorization were expelled. The data suggests that this significant change in border policy did not trigger a big shift in foreign job seeker behavior. This may be because Title 42 did not meaningfully deter migrants from attempting to cross the border into the United States to begin with. It may also suggest that job seekers prone to conducting cross-border job searches were not directly impacted by Title 42.
Foreign-born workers have always been an important source of labor for US employers (especially as native-born population growth has slowed), and have driven the bulk of overall growth in the labor force in recent years. As of March 2025, 19.8% of all US workers were foreign-born, up from 16.7% in June 2020. The influx of migrants to the U.S. — which reached a peak of more than one million in 2023 — arguably had a stabilizing effect on what was an overheated, post-pandemic US labor market, helping relieve workforce shortages and moderate wage growth nationwide.
It remains to be seen what long-term impacts, if any, this recent decline in foreign interest in US jobs will have on the domestic labor market. If flagging foreign interest in US jobs begins to translate into lower actual immigration, productivity and economic growth could suffer, labor shortages could become more pronounced, and inflation could rise, especially in sectors most reliant on workers from abroad. This includes sectors with essential workers, including healthcare and construction. While roughly 20% of the U.S. workforce is foreign-born, around 30% of construction workers, 26% of physicians and surgeons, and 40% of home health aides are immigrants.
Australia, Canada, and Germany
The trajectory of foreign job seeker interest in Australia, Canada, and Germany has differed since 2019, coinciding with each country’s respective political and economic climate. Overall, Australia consistently has higher overall foreign interest as a proportion of all clicks, peaking at more than 14% in December 2023. This is consistent with the fact that more than one-in-four workers in the country’s labor market are foreign-born. Conversely, foreign interest in German and Canadian jobs stayed closer to 5% for much of the period studied, with some spikes and troughs. All countries saw a sharp decline in foreign interest from late 2024.
Foreign job seeker interest in Australia rose sharply during the post-pandemic period, particularly following the end of COVID-19 travel restrictions in early 2022. In late 2022, an increase in the annual cap for permanent migrants was announced, which could also have contributed to this spike in foreign interest. However, the growth rate of foreign interest began to slow in late 2023, suggesting that initial post-pandemic momentum may have tapered off. And by late 2024, foreign interest started declining sharply, coinciding with tighter immigration policy proposals.
In Canada, foreign job seeker interest was stable through 2020 before growing steadily (and more smoothly than in other countries) from 2021 onwards. Notably, Canada’s peak (7.8% in July 2023) in foreign job seeker interest — after the COVID-19 pandemic — occurred earlier than the global average and prior to other countries analyzed. However, like other nations, interest has declined since.
The downward trend throughout late 2023, 2024, and into 2025 coincides with a significant shift in Canadian immigration policy in response to growing housing and infrastructure strains. In 2024, Canada introduced measures to curb the number of non-permanent residents, including a cap on international student admissions (which led to a 43% drop in student visa approvals in 2024), restrictions on work permits for dependents, and a phaseout of temporary post-pandemic worker policies. These policies likely contributed to the decline in foreign job seeker interest since late 2023.
Finally, foreign interest in German jobs peaked at 6.7% of all clicks in August 2024, before declining sharply to a four-year low of 3.5% by February 2025. Perhaps not coincidentally, much of the political debate that marked Germany’s federal elections in February 2025 centered around public concerns with rising immigration. Prior to that, Germany’s implementation of the Skilled Immigration Act in March 2020 — aimed at addressing workforce shortages by making it easier for skilled workers from outside the European Union to get German work permits — coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, estimating the policy’s impact on foreign interest is difficult. Foreign clicks dropped significantly immediately after the act took effect, suggesting that the COVID-19 travel restrictions and economic downturn overshadowed any potential immediate impact of the new law. Foreign interest remained relatively stagnant until early 2022, when it began a steady rise, likely influenced by the post-pandemic economic upturn and ripple effects from Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
When indexed to March 2020 (when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic), the four countries exhibit different trajectories in foreign job seeker interest.
While the U.S., Australia, and Canada initially followed similar patterns — mostly hovering between 100% and 150% of their pandemic baseline — Australia experienced a dramatic surge beginning in 2022. By 2024, foreign interest in Australian jobs reached almost 400% of its pre-pandemic level. This sharp rise points to a strong post-COVID recovery and growing appeal to international talent. In contrast, the U.S. and Canada showed a more gradual and modest increase. Interestingly, foreign interest in German jobs consistently remained below the March 2020 level, exceeding it only thrice over the period analyzed.
The decline across all four countries, beginning at various points in 2023 or 2024, suggests the influence of broader global forces (such as a tightening of immigration policies globally and a cooling down of the economy) impacting foreign job seeker interest. When indexed to the global peak in foreign job seeker interest in August 2023, it was Canada that experienced the sharpest decline in foreign shares by the end of 2024, with the foreign share reaching half of what it was in the fall of 2023.
Correlation with the cooling of the economy
While the number of job postings across all four countries increased significantly after the pandemic, indicating strong post-pandemic economic recoveries in each nation, an economic cooldown began sometime in 2022 in all countries. Australia, which had the strongest growth after the pandemic, also had the most pronounced decline, while Canada, Germany, and the United States also trended downward.
The reduction in job postings levels across the four countries started earlier than the subsequent decline in foreign interest. In fact, foreign interest globally started increasing around the same time as the broader global economic cooldown began in 2022. This could suggest that as demand for labor reduced across countries, workers increasingly sought opportunities abroad.
Conclusion
Despite a global shift towards more anti-immigration sentiments, foreign job seeker interest — found to be a good indicator to forecast future migration trends — remained resilient through the post-pandemic period, peaking in mid-2023 before declining from late 2024. While the post-pandemic economic recovery and termination of travel restrictions initially seemed to fuel foreign job seeker engagement, this interest has recently begun to fade dramatically. This global decline in foreign interest in jobs abroad could be attributable to a cooling down of the economy, tighter immigration policies in several countries, and/or increasing public opposition to immigration.
The pace and timeline of these trends vary by country, highlighting the role of domestic policies in shaping foreign interest in the labor market. As governments continue addressing domestic issues through immigration policy and legislation, the coming years will demonstrate whether this decline is temporary or represents a longer-term shift in attitudes towards work abroad.
Methodology
We assess foreign job seeker interest by tracking the share of total clicks on Indeed job postings in a given country by job seekers with IP addresses outside of that country. Data from job seekers in 254 countries and overseas territories was included in this analysis. Job seekers whose location could not be determined were removed from the analysis. All data in the post are summarized by month, unless noted otherwise. Figures may differ slightly from previously published data due to changes in filters used for this analysis, which expanded the sample size compared to prior work.
