Recruiting Market Report - August 2026

​Find out what we are hearing from candidates and clients and get our predictions for the future of the hiring market in the August 2026 edition of The ASP Team Market Report:

Quinn Finnigan - Recruiting Services Leader

Joss Stokke - Recruiting Services Leader

What are we hearing from candidates?
"Lateral is fine with me."
Gone are the days of people changing jobs and expecting a minimum of a 10% increase in salary. White collar wages have stagnated over the past 2 years while blue collar and hour wages have continued to increase. Job-seeking candidates have seemingly accepted this reality and are increasingly open to accepting offers at lateral total compensation (or maybe an increase well below 10%). This signals that people on the move are choosing other motivating factors like company culture, growth opportunity and change in responsibility/industry over pay. 

What are we hearing from clients?
"Let's run in parallel." 
Five years ago I wrote an article titled 'People Aren't Applying to Job Ads Anymore' - that world is long gone! Since then we've gone through an AI-assisted surge where it's now easier than ever for candidates to apply to jobs. Consequently, hiring managers have been (over)relying on job ads to fill roles for a couple of years but are now waking up to the new reality this world creates: the volume of applications does not correlate to quality.

Most hiring managers we speak with now are choosing to use our expert, white glove service alongside the 'post and pray' method. Sifting through AI-generated resumes and quantities of candidates from out of state have them thirsting for an expert service provider to give them exactly what they're asking for quickly. Our recruiting group consists of former Big-4 accounting and finance professionals who have worked the roles we recruit for and understand the right fit. It’s not guesswork for us.

What am I feeling about the market?
School's Back in Session
My kids started school in late August, which means we all had to get our minds in gear for the transition away from summer and back to routine. The latest BLS job market figures have me scratching my head like I'm doing fractions for the first time in 3 months. We had an initial loss in July of 23k jobs and have a gain in August of 162k, which does not seem to align with seasonal expectations.

On top of that we've seen consistent significant reforecasts to a degree we've not seen in the past. Overall job adds continue to be below forecast for the year and yet unemployment continues to decrease. The recent figures from the BLS are leaving me confused - maybe it's summer brain and a math I have not learned yet. I'm glad school is back in session.

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ASP Hiring Statistics
44 - Days to place on average
$162,286 - Average placed Controller salary
26% - Percent of diversity hires
91% - Percent of time we get interviews for our clients

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Recent Placements
VP of Finance – Retail – Seattle
Senior Accountant – Construction – North Seattle
Controller – Professional Services – Kent

View Our Current Openings

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Hiring Smarter with The ASP Team
Check out the latest episode of our accounting and finance recruiting podcast!

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