Data-driven analyses on the future of the labor market: Stepstone expands its labor market research

Press release
Data-driven analyses on the future of the labor market: Stepstone expands its labor market research

• Expanded research team with Dr. Christina Langer, Dr. Anna Wittich, and Dr. Julius Probst covers three perspectives: companies, candidates, and the economic context
• Recent market updates and labor market briefings link platform data with labor market analysis
• Latest briefing: Application interest per job posting in Germany has nearly doubled since 2023

Düsseldorf, June 11^th, 2026 – The digital recruiting platform The Stepstone Group is expanding its in-house labor market research, enabling it to provide companies and recruiters with faster, more accurate insights into current market trends. With its research team of economists and labor market researchers, Stepstone brings together three key perspectives: the views of companies, candidates, and the macroeconomic context.

An overview of the research team:

• Dr. Christina Langer, Senior Economist at The Stepstone Group, is an economist and labor market researcher specializing in the future of work, generative AI, and skills development. In addition to her role at Stepstone, she is an economist at the ifo Institute and a Digital Fellow at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, part of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI.
• Dr. Anna Wittich, labor market researcher at The Stepstone Group, conducts research on job searching, job applications, recruiting, and job satisfaction. In her work, she analyzes how the expectations, decisions, and experiences of employees, job seekers, and companies are changing in the labor market. She earned her Ph.D. from the Research Centre for Education and the Labor Market at Maastricht University
• Dr. Julius Probst, economist and labor market researcher at The Stepstone Group, focuses on labor market analysis, macroeconomic developments, and international employment trends. He holds a Ph.D. in economic history and a master’s degree in economics from Lund University.

Reliable market updates and new formats
In addition to established formats such as the Stepstone Salary Report and the Hiring Trends Update, the team will now be publishing regular market updates and job market briefings—closer to current developments and directly relevant to recruiters’ day-to-day work. The first briefing by Dr. Christina Langer illustrates what this means in practical terms: Stepstone platform data shows that the number of applications per active job posting in Germany nearly doubled between 2023 and 2026. The operational challenge in recruiting is thus shifting from the question of receiving enough applications to the question of identifying the right ones.

“We’re already seeing in our data what official statistics haven’t yet revealed: where talent is ready to make a move, which skills are in demand, and how salary expectations are shifting. This edge comes from combining platform data from millions of applications with real candidate perspectives—a level of data access that no market research firm possesses. In a labor market undergoing profound change, we help companies and candidates make the right decisions, and the insights we gain are directly incorporated into the further development of our products,” says Jan Neumann, Managing Director DACH at Stepstone.

About The Stepstone Group 
The Stepstone Group is a leading global digital recruitment platform that connects companies with the right talent and helps people find the right job. AI-driven job marketplaces and programmatic-powered marketing solutions connect more than 130 million job applications with about 70,000 customers every year. The Stepstone Group operates in more than 10 countries - including Stepstone in Germany, Appcast in the USA and Totaljobs in the UK. The company is headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany and employs about 3,000 people worldwide. For more information: www.thestepstonegroup.com/english

Contact
The Stepstone Group media relations
press@stepstone.com