LinkedIn: 58% of employees are looking for new roles, yet recruiters still can’t find the right talent

More businesses are striving to become skills-based organizations, in a bid to diversify talent and to prepare the workforce for the future.

But with such a variety of skills available, how do leaders know which ones to prioritize developing and which to seek out in new hires?

LinkedIn’s 2025 Skills on the Rise report named the top 15 skills growing in demand in the UK and US, to help leaders identify areas of focus.

Speaking exclusively to UNLEASH, LinkedIn’s Vice President EMEA & LATAM of Talent Solution, Olivier Sabella, shares his thoughts on how and why businesses need to close the skills gap.

Bridging the skills gap

Over half (58%) of professionals across the globe are looking for new employment in 2025, according to LinkedIn’s recent research. Yet employers are still struggling to find the right talent. 

You can see that people are looking actively for jobs, but recruiters are saying that it’s harder and harder to find the right talent. When we look into this, we see that there are bigger gaps when it comes to the mediation system,” Sabella highlights.

What’s more, the report found that soft skills, such as empathy, communication, and leadership, are particularly hard to find when sourcing new talent. 

In fact, almost half (47%) of global hiring managers share that this is one of their biggest challenges. 

“The purpose of [the report] was really to help individuals understand where the skills gaps are. Over the past year, as three out of five people have been actively looking for new roles, we’ve seen two key themes. 

“The first is the emergence of Gen AI,” Sabella explains. “It was not surprising that more than 50% of the members will see their job change because of the technology, which is why AI literacy falls so high in the ranking.

“Secondly, we see that sub-skills are becoming more critical because we see AI incubating a lot of the greater skill tasks.”

This challenge is only predicted to worsen in the future, with 70% of HR professionals believing that more individuals are leaving full-time education without the right soft skills to thrive in the workplace.

Employees were found to share the same concerns, with 21% worried they’re not equipped with enough skills for the future; however, they are eager to learn.

Yet, there does appear to be a mismatch between the number of organizations wanting to implement AI, and the number of organizations that are actually doing so. 

“I think 80% of C-levels are saying this year is for being strategic, but that they are wanting to invest. Yet the reality is that to go from wanting to implement it, to doing so successfully takes a number of steps,” Sabella says.

He adds: “Businesses need to not only think about what AI can do, but what your people can do with AI to bridge this gap.”