Show HN: HireIndex – 3 years of "Who Wants to Be Hired" trends
hireindex.xyzHi HN,
I’ve been analyzing Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Hired? threads going back three years and built HireIndex to make the data explorable.
Given how much the industry has changed, a few trends stood out:
1. A sharp increase in posts starting in 2023 There’s a significant jump in the number of people posting beginning in 2023, which aligns with the broader tech downturn and layoffs. This marks a clear break from prior years and sets the baseline for many of the shifts below.
2. Job seekers are more senior than before The average experience level has risen from ~7.5 years in 2022 to ~9+ years in Dec 2025 and Jan 2026. In other words, the typical person posting today is noticeably more senior than a few years ago. Interestingly, this shift is much less pronounced when you look at US-only data.
3. Fewer juniors, more very senior candidates Posts from junior candidates (0–2 years of experience) have steadily declined. At the same time, there’s a clear rise in people with 15+ years of experience looking for work. This trend is much stronger outside the US, where the US shows only a modest increase.
4. More international job seekers There’s been a growing share of posts from outside the US, especially from countries like Canada and India, relative to US-based job seekers.
If you want to explore the data yourself, including charts and breakdowns: https://hireindex.xyz/#stats
If you’re hiring, HireIndex also provides a searchable directory of candidates with direct links to resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and original HN posts. https://hireindex.xyz/#directory
Would love feedback, questions, or ideas for other cuts of the data to add. Really cool tool. Would love to see similar analysis on the 'Who's Hiring' threads. How is the 'Want Remote' criteria assessed? Thank you for the feedback. Yes, I’ll be adding a “Who’s Hiring” section. “Wants remote” is one of the questions people answer when they post in the "Who Wants to Be Hired" thread. Nice! I'll keep an eye out for it. One small bit of feedback is that it would be useful to see an 'other' category as the four roles defined seem a bit limiting.