By rssfeeds-admin 
Deel, global HR and payroll platform provider, has launched its annual State of Global Hiring Report.
Among the nearly 100 startups founded between 2020 and 2025, that raised $100M+ in funding, the UK accounted for 12.2% of cross-border hires – the highest share globally. The UK is closely followed by Canada (11.9%), Germany (8.8%), Australia (5.8%), and Spain (5.2%) – all high-income markets.
The report also shows that the UK consistently ranks among the top worker-source countries across every major hiring market. The report suggests this underlines strong global demand for British talent.
According to Lauren Thomas, Economist at Deel, “UK talent is gravitating back toward London, and global employers are following. The renewed pull of the capital is a major reason the UK is leading the world in startup hiring.”
This UK momentum sits within a broader set of global hiring shifts captured in Deel’s 2025 State of Global Hiring Report. Drawing on data from more than one million worker contracts spanning 37,000+ companies in 150+ countries, the report outlines major global labour market trends.
AI is creating jobs, jot just replacing them
The report reveals the 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. They perform 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 include:
- Pay is sharply bifurcated: 30% of trainers earn $15–20/hour for annotation work, 19% earn $50–75/hour, and 6% earn $100+/hour for subject-matter expertise.
- 58% of AI trainers are based in the US, followed by India (7.2%), the Philippines (4.6%), Canada (2.1%), and Kenya (1.7%).
- A gender pay gap persists: In the US, male AI trainers earn a median of $50/hour vs. $30/hour for female trainers. This was driven by occupational segmentation across specialisations.
The Urban Boomerang: Remote workers are moving back to 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 US, 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:
- US 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 US 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 local currencies to protect their purchasing power.
- USD appeared in 5 of the 10 most common country-currency payment combinations globally in 2025.
- In Argentina, more contractors chose USD than their local currency.
- Bolivia’s USD adoption directly tracks inflation: when inflation rises, contractors shift to USD; when it stabilises, local currency rebounds.
- Argentina leads stablecoin adoption, followed by Cameroon, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, Tajikistan, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine.
- When Croatia and Bulgaria adopted the euro, workers didn’t fully switch – many maintained USD as a hedge alongside their new local currency.
“The rise of ‘currency hopping’ and stablecoin payments is a direct signal that workers are taking global mobility into their own hands,” said Kristine Lipscomb, General Manager of Global Mobility at Deel. “When a contractor in Argentina chooses to get paid in USD or stablecoins instead of pesos, it’s not just a financial decision. It’s a vote of confidence in the global, borderless economy.
“Companies that want to attract and retain the best talent worldwide need to offer the flexibility to match how modern workers actually want to be paid.”
Enterprise Times: What this means for businesses
This is quite an interesting and comprehensive report which examines the global HR marketplace. The report suggests that cross-border hiring has matured in the last few years. Companies from high-growth startups to Fortune 500 enterprises now have access to years of data on where international hiring works and where it doesn’t.
Furthermore, workers in volatile economies have figured out how to protect their earnings. Job categories that didn’t exist two years ago now employ tens of thousands globally.
The Office of Budget Responsibility has forecasted unemployment this year will peak higher than expected at 5.3% in the UK.
However, the findings from Deel’s report suggests overseas startups could help mitigate this as they’re prioritising UK talent more than any other market. As a result, global companies are leveraging that data to develop and implement effective international hiring strategies.
The post Deel research shows UK as top global hub for startup hiring appeared first on Enterprise Times.
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