Employers are hunting for South Africans with these skills

Even in South Africa’s strained job market, some sectors and roles remain in high demand as employers hunt for skilled workers.

The Pnet Job Market Trends Report for October 2025, which provides insights into recruitment and employment trends in the South African market, revealed this trend.

Recently, Pnet redefined Job Market Activity to be able to present more comprehensive facts on hiring activity in South Africa.

Previously, the primary focus when reporting on hiring activity was looking at advertised vacancies as a measure of labour demand.

Over time, Pnet said a second measure has become a relevant key indicator of hiring activity: “Candidate Database Search”.

• Candidate Database Search is a common practice across recruiters and hiring
• professionals which works similarly to a simple Google search.

This allows suitable candidates to be searched & headhunted through candidate databases, such as Pnet’s CV database.

Pnet’s jobseeker database currently has 7.4 million registered users, with more than half of those job seekers opting to be searchable by recruiters.

This number is growing daily. Recruiters can contact suitable candidates through the candidate database search functionality and start recruiting immediately.

To build a comprehensive picture of South Africa’s job market trends, specifically in terms of hiring activity, Pnet uses two measures: vacancy advertising and candidate database searches.

These measures are combined into a weighted key performance indicator for hiring activity in the South African job market.

Pnet’s latest findings revealed that hiring activity in September 2025 increased by 7% year-on-year and by 6% month-on-month. This overall rise reflects growth across both underlying indicators:

• Vacancy advertising increased by 6% year-on-year and 4% month-on-month, showing stronger demand for talent through job postings.
• Candidate database searches increased by 9% year-over-year and by 12% month-over-month, indicating more active headhunting and direct sourcing by recruiters.

Together, these two measures combine to form Pnet’s Hiring Activity indicator – providing a more comprehensive view of labour demand in the market.

In-demand jobs

Pnet’s report highlighted five specific “trending” jobs which are showing increased demand for workers and professionals. These are:

• Nursing and professional caregiving
• Graphic, print, and packaging design
• Accounts payable and receivable
• Financial and project accounting
• Building Project Management

The report also looked into sector-specific hiring activity trends. Based on these trends, Pnet said that stable and increasing recruitment activity indicates confidence in the local economy and business growth.

The first trending sector, according to Pnet’s report, is Design, Media, and Arts, which remains at the top of the job sector list.

After a slight decrease in advertised jobs in August, vacancies increased by 5% in September. Year-on-year, growth in this sector remained strong, with a 38% increase in vacancy advertising.

Pnet’s Job Market Trends Report from January 2025 showed that salaries in this field can range from R10,900 per month for copywriters to R30,300 per month for product designers.

Business and Management jobs have also been stable and have shown a slow increase over the last six months. Month-on-month, hiring activity has increased by 1%.

Year-on-year, this sector has seen a 25% increase in vacancy advertising. Salaries in this sector range from R16,200 a month for a recruiter, all the way up to R131,400 for an executive manager or director.

The final trending sector Pnet highlighted was marketing. Although this field remained one of South Africa’s top job sectors, there have been fewer Marketing jobs available over the last 2 months.

Month-on-month vacancy levels declined by 1% in September 2025. Year-on-year, vacancy advertising in this sector was 20% higher than in September 2024.

In this sector, salaries start from R11,100 a month for social media content creators to R51,400 a month for product managers.