At the end of each year, we review our hiring data across all placements made within our specialist areas, including Finance, Marketing, Supply Chain and other corporate functions. This gives us a clear, evidence-based view of how the market is shifting, where demand is growing, and how hiring behaviour is evolving across the UAE.

What the data tells us about the UAE talent market

As we close out 2025, we’ve taken the opportunity to analyse the trends from the past five years. Clear patterns have emerged not sudden shifts or dramatic change, but of consistency, gradual evolution and a maturing employment landscape.

This review focuses on where talent is coming from and the age profile of hires, offering a factual snapshot of how the UAE workforce continues to develop.

Where talent came from in 2025

In 2025, our placements reflected the international composition of the UAE workforce:

• Europe accounted for approximately 29% of hires
• South Asia represented 44% of placements, making it the largest regional source of talent this year
• The  Middle East and wider region made up around 15% of hires.
  

How this compares to previous years

As in previous years, no single nationality dominated hiring. Instead, talent continued to come from a broad range of countries, reinforcing the UAE’s position as a globally connected employment market where skills, experience and cultural alignment remain the primary drivers of hiring decisions.

While public commentary and the media often suggest sudden influxes from specific countries, the data points to stability rather than spikes.

We have been particularly interested to see if there had been an increase in British professionals finding employment, due to a lot of noise in the market about people leaving the UK to take advantage of the tax-free lifestyle in the UAE. British nationals have always featured strongly within our hires, but their overall share in our placements, rather than increasing sharply has declined. Anecdotally, we are seeing a sharp rise in applications direct from the UK but finding that clients are choosing other nationalities and those who already have UAE experience.

In comparison, Indian nationals (the UAE’s largest expat nationality), have found more placements with our clients this year, many of these placements are individuals who already have UAE experience and have found new exciting roles through us.

Age profile of hires (2019–2025)

Looking at hiring patterns over the last seven years, the 30–39 age group has consistently represented the largest proportion of our hires, accounting for 55% in 2019 and 46% in 2025. This is very much in keeping with the UAE overall population.

During the same period, hires aged 40–49 have increased steadily, rising from 13% in 2019 to 26% in 2025, and now representing around a quarter of all placements. Hiring within the 20–29 age group declined following 2019, reaching a low of 16–17% between 2021 and 2023, before recovering to 24% in 2025.

Professionals aged 50+ continue to make up a small but consistent proportion of hires, fluctuating between 1–5% each year and returning to 4% in 2025.

We were pleased to see an (albeit it small) increase in placements of the over 50s this year. We represent a great deal of excellent, qualified, experienced and motivated mature candidates and whilst our clients often ask us for c-suite profiles, we find that many prefer to focus on hires below 45 years. The UAE population is a very young one, and has, proportionally, very few citizens and residents over the age of 55 (less than 7% according to the latest census).

A balanced picture

Overall, the data reflects a stable hiring market, with talent drawn from a broad range of regions and age groups. In 2025, hiring decisions appear less concentrated around one profile, with greater balance across experience levels and backgrounds.

Looking ahead to 2026

As we look ahead to 2026, we’re incredibly grateful to our clients, candidates and partners for the trust and support shared with us throughout 2025.

Wishing all our contacts a happy and peaceful festive season and a successful year ahead.

Finally…

As a reminder, our recruiters are well-established with solid networks. We represent exclusive candidates that other agencies don’t even know about.

We have specialist recruiters in the following areas:

• Finance, Accounting, Banking, Fintech, Data Analytics
• IT, Tech
• Legal, Compliance, Risk
• Business Support, Admin
• Sales
• Marketing
• Events
• Supply Chain, Procurement, Shipping, Logistics

Whether you’re actively hiring or simply want a market update, benchmarking on your existing team’s salaries, we’re always happy to help.

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