Is the Payments Hiring Market Starting to Turn? A UK and US Perspective
After a prolonged period of cautious recruitment, there are early signs of improvement in the UK hiring market. However, the picture in the US remains more restrained, particularly across financial services and technology. For payments employers, this creates an interesting moment. Specialist candidates may be more accessible than they were during the post-pandemic hiring boom, but that window may begin to narrow if confidence continues to recover.
The UK market is showing early signs of life
The latest KPMG and REC Report on Jobs found that permanent placements increased slightly during August 2026, the first recorded rise since September 2022. The improvement was modest, but it marked a significant change after almost four years of declining or stagnant permanent hiring. Temporary recruitment also continued to grow.
Source: KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs
ManpowerGroup’s latest outlook provides another encouraging signal. Its UK Net Employment Outlook for the fourth quarter stands at +23%, more than double the figure recorded a year earlier. Forty per cent of employers expect to increase staffing, with positive intentions reported across every UK region. Technology and information businesses have particularly strong hiring expectations. That matters because payments companies compete with them for many of the same engineers, architects, cyber specialists and AI-capable leaders.
This does not mean the UK has returned to a high-volume recruitment market. It suggests that some businesses are restarting searches they had previously delayed. For employers, the risk is assuming today’s candidate availability will continue indefinitely.
If you have postponed an important payments appointment, now may be a good time to benchmark the role and assess the available talent, before wider confidence increases competition.
The US tells a more cautious story
US payroll employment increased by 162,000 in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment remained at 4.1%, while average hourly earnings rose by 3.1% over the year. Those headline figures sound positive. However, financial activities lost approximately 11,000 jobs during the month, while information employment declined by 23,000.
Source: US Employment Situation – August 2026
The broader US economy may be adding jobs, but financial services and technology are not experiencing the same conditions. That distinction matters for payments businesses entering or expanding in the US. National employment and wage figures tell us very little about the availability of a proven enterprise salesperson, product leader or market-entry executive. These candidates operate within small, specialist networks. The right person may still command a strong base salary, commission and equity package, even while larger financial and technology employers restructure.
Employers should therefore avoid assuming that a quieter market automatically makes specialist US talent plentiful or inexpensive.
A better market does not remove the need for a strong search
Improving UK confidence and restrained US financial-sector hiring may create opportunities, but neither market should be approached with broad assumptions. Receiving more applications does not necessarily mean having more suitable candidates. A payments business still needs to define:
- The commercial outcome the appointment must deliver
- Which experience is genuinely essential
- Whether the role requires local market knowledge
- What a competitive package looks like in that specific talent pool
- Why a strong candidate should choose the opportunity
The businesses that benefit from this moment will not simply wait for more candidates to become available. They will use market mapping and honest salary benchmarking to understand where the relevant people are, and what it will take to attract them.
A window of opportunity, but not an unlimited one
The UK market appears to be turning, while the US remains more selective across financial services and technology. That could give payments employers a valuable opportunity to reach candidates who might become harder to secure as hiring confidence improves. The important point is not to rush into an unnecessary appointment. It is to avoid delaying a strategically important one because the market still feels uncertain.
If you are planning a payments hire in the UK or US, I can help you benchmark the salary, assess the available talent pool and test whether the brief is realistic before you begin a full search. Please contact me for an informal and confidential conversation: bn@payments-recruitment.co.uk
