Remote's 2025 Global Workforce Report, from more than 3,600 HR and business leaders, finds 60% of U.S.

Remote’s 2025 Global Workforce Report, based on responses from more than 3,600 HR and business leaders worldwide, finds that 60% of U.S. leaders say finding qualified local talent is harder than a year ago. The report treats hiring difficulties less as a cyclical slowdown than as a structural skills — location gap that is prompting firms to change hiring strategies. It also notes tightened immigration pathways and the accelerating impact of AI on job requirements, which many workers cannot be reskilled for quickly enough.

Concrete survey metrics underline the business costs: nearly half of U.S. leaders said talent shortages caused at least one missed business goal-including shelved expansions, delayed product launches, or slipped revenue targets. Looking ahead, 73% of respondents expect that more than half of their new hires in 2026 will be based outside the United States. In the past six months, 45% of U.S. companies reported hiring internationally; 50% plan to do so in the next six months. Only 15% said they hire exclusively within the U.S.

For many employers, what began as experimentation with remote work has moved toward a default operating model. U.S. companies now employ people across an average of 3.5 countries, nearly matching the global average of 3.6. A decade ago, that geographic spread would have been unusual. Hiring abroad can accelerate market entry by bringing in staff who already understand regional regulations and customer expectations, reducing the time and cost of localizing operations.

Distributed teams also bring operational advantages for product and engineering organizations: work can progress across time zones so engineering advances overnight, support coverage improves, and release cycles can shorten. Those benefits are conditional. The report stresses that gains require disciplined processes — clear ownership, defined handoffs, and workflows that account for time differences — because poorly managed distribution risks creating an inefficient, always — on culture that erodes productivity.

The shift alters the labor market for workers as well as employers. Roles and career experience are becoming more cross — border, expanding opportunities for many but also enlarging the talent pool and intensifying competition. The report highlights an increasing premium on AI fluency and rapid reskilling; companies that can recruit globally and adapt onboarding, performance management, and training are better positioned to access scarce skills. In short, the report presents a bifurcation: firms that embrace global hiring and redesign processes to support distributed teams gain critical capabilities and speed; firms that continue to prioritize exclusively domestic hiring without addressing skills or reskilling needs are likeliest to face slower hiring and recurring missed opportunities.