Deel, the leading global HR and payroll platform, today released its annual State of Global Hiring Report, the most comprehensive analysis of how companies hire across borders. Drawing on data from more than one million worker contracts spanning 37,000+ companies in 150+ countries, the 2025 report reveals four seismic shifts in the global labour market: AI training has emerged as a distinct, global profession, top-funded startups are hiring internationally for specialised talent rather than cost savings, remote workers are migrating back toward cities, and contractors in volatile economies are increasingly "currency hopping" into USD and stablecoins to protect their earnings.
AI Is Creating Jobs, Not Just Replacing Them
The report reveals a rapid emergence of AI trainers as a new, expansive global profession that barely existed two years ago. Over 70,000 workers now train AI systems across more than 600 organisations, performing tasks from basic data annotation to expert-level feedback in medicine, economics, and translation. General AI trainer roles grew 283% cross-border in 2025, making it the single fastest-growing role on Deel's platform.
Additional key findings on AI trainers:
Pay is sharply bifurcated: 30% of trainers earn $15–20/hour for annotation work, while 19% earn $50–75/hour, and 6% earn $100+/hour for subject-matter expertise.
58% of AI trainers are based in the U.S., followed by India (7.2%), the Philippines (4.6%), Canada (2.1%), and Kenya (1.7%).
A gender pay gap persists: in the U.S., male AI trainers earn a median of $50/hour vs. $30/hour for female trainers, driven by occupational segmentation across specialisations.
Top Startups Go Global for Talent, Not Cost Savings
Among nearly 100 startups founded between 2020 and 2025 that raised $100M+ in funding, cross-border hiring overwhelmingly targets wealthy, high-income countries, shattering the myth that international hiring is primarily about outsourcing.
The UK leads top-startup hires (12.2%), followed by Canada (11.9%), Germany (8.8%), Australia (5.8%), and Spain (5.2%) – all high-income markets.
Software developers make up 28% of cross-border hires among top startups, followed by tech sales (6.2%), business developers (4%), and AI engineers (2%).
Top startups are 13.6 percentage points more likely to hire software developers cross-border than general SMBs.
Seven of the top 10 cross-border roles globally are in sales, marketing, or customer-facing functions – local market knowledge remains nearly impossible to automate.
The Urban Boomerang: Remote Workers Are Moving Back Toward Cities
After a pandemic-era exodus from major cities, remote workers are gradually migrating back. The average distance of cross-border employees from major urban centres has declined every year since 2022 (when Deel began tracking this metric). In the U.S., workers are now as close to cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco as they were in 2021. Similar patterns appear in London and Paris.
Global Compensation: Leadership Roles Drive Pay Growth, Regional Gaps Widen
Salary growth in 2025 concentrated in senior leadership positions, but the drivers varied dramatically by region:
U.S. project managers led all roles at 24.5% compensation growth, followed by COOs (21.6%) and CEOs (20%).
COOs in Latin America saw 99.8% compensation growth – nearly 5x the U.S. rate for the same role.
Singapore CTOs experienced 101% pay growth, but other tech roles in the same market contracted.
LATAM financial analysts saw 195.5% compensation growth, reflecting the rapid professionalisation of operational roles in emerging markets.
LATAM call centre agents gained 210.8% even after excluding top employers – signalling broad-based demand, not isolated company effects.
Workers Are "Currency Hopping" to Protect Earnings
As part of the "currency hopping" trend, contractors in economically volatile markets with high inflation are increasingly choosing USD or stablecoins over loca...