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# AI hiring outpaced overall hiring in 40 of 46 countries in December 2025; Estonia lagged most
- URL: https://aiadoption.org/data/ai-hiring-vs-overall-hiring-46-countries/
- Published: 2026-10-19T16:26:10.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T06:02:06.000Z
- Description: In December 2025, AI hiring on LinkedIn grew faster than overall hiring in 40 of 46 countries. It fell behind in six, most in Estonia (−20.3%), Sweden (−11.6%) and Iceland (−10.9%). The US was at 9.0%.
- Author: Manu
- Tags: Data, AI Jobs, #chart, #ai-index-2026, #hub-jobs

−20.3%

change in Estonia's ratio of AI hiring to overall hiring, December 2025 year on year, the lowest of 46 countries

Largest shortfalls

Estonia\-20.3%

Sweden\-11.6%

Iceland\-10.9%

## What the chart shows

A positive value means AI talent was being hired faster, relative to all members, than a year earlier. In December 2025 that was true in 40 of the 46 countries LinkedIn tracks, from Indonesia (31.7%) down to Australia (0.4%). The United States was at 9.0%, 22nd.

Six countries were below zero: Estonia (−20.3%), Sweden (−11.6%), Iceland (−10.9%), Slovenia (−5.3%), Lithuania (−1.3%) and Uruguay (−0.4%). The AI Index names Iceland and Sweden as countries where AI hiring has lagged the wider job market since 2018.

## Key numbers

| Measure       | Value   |
| ------------- | ------- |
| Indonesia     | 31.74%  |
| United States | 8.97%   |
| Australia     | 0.37%   |
| Sweden        | −11.56% |
| Estonia       | −20.26% |

## How to read it

- The measure is the year-on-year change in the AI hiring rate relative to the overall hiring rate on LinkedIn, as a three-month moving average.
- The data file has monthly values for each country from January 2018; this chart shows the latest month, December 2025\. The 15 highest values are also in the [top 15 chart](https://aiadoption.org/data/ai-hiring-growth-by-country/).
- Monthly values swing widely: every country was below zero in at least 28 of the 96 months since January 2018.

**Source:** [LinkedIn](https://aiadoption.org/sources/#linkedin-economic-graph), 2025, via the AI Index Report 2026 (Stanford HAI), figure 4.4.16: *AI vs. overall hiring rate growth by geographic area, 2018–25*. Chart and text by AI Adoption.  
Numbers checked against the published data on 20 October 2026.  
[Download the data (CSV)](https://charts.aiadoption.org/ai-index/csv/ai-hiring-vs-overall-hiring-46-countries.csv?ref=aiadoption.org) · [Cite this chart](#source)