The UAE emerged as the most balanced job market in the Gulf in 2025, with strong and sustained demand across technology, engineering and sales roles, according to Naukrigulf’s Year End Report 2025.
The report said employers in the UAE are hiring simultaneously for scale and skill, driven by continued recruitment in construction and hospitality alongside rising demand for specialised roles in cloud computing, data and digital technologies.
In the UAE, hiring demand was led by construction and real estate, followed by IT, telecom and internet; and oil, gas and energy, making it one of the region’s most evenly balanced labour markets. The most in-demand functions were engineering, sales and software/IT, while employers frequently recruited for project managers, sales executives and customer service representatives.
The report identified HVAC, accounting and customer support as critical skills that defined competitive advantage for candidates in the UAE job market, highlighting continued demand for both technical expertise and customer-facing capabilities.
Across the GCC, traditional industries such as Construction and Oil, Gas & Energy continued to dominate recruitment activity, accounting for more than 4.6 million candidate searches during the year. Employers showed heightened demand for Engineering talent (850,000+ searches), Sales roles (800,000+ searches) and Project Management positions (775,000+ searches), reflecting the region’s ongoing focus on execution-led growth.
The findings are based on insights from more than 9 million hiring interactions on Naukrigulf in 2025, supported by jobseeker sentiment gathered through monthly Gulf Pulse surveys across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Despite strong hiring activity, employees continue to face challenges when negotiating with employers. Nearly 46% of jobseekers cited salary expectation mismatches as their biggest obstacle, while 32% said articulating personal value remained difficult. Other challenges included handling counteroffers (18%) and negotiating benefits (4%).
Beyond pay, UAE professionals increasingly prioritised non-monetary benefits when evaluating job opportunities. Professional development emerged as the most sought-after benefit, followed by vacation time, health benefits and flexible working arrangements, underscoring a growing focus on long-term career growth and work-life balance.
