Mid year review - 2026

In short

The sustainability hiring market in mid-2026 is quiet, held back by macro uncertainty around energy, the economy and war. We think the situation is forward-loaded: the regulation, capital and leadership changes that drive hiring are all moving at once, but the hiring itself is still catching up to them. We expect organisations to bounce when the uncertainty clears, or once it has become normalised — September if a peace deal is reached over the summer, but more likely mid-October if it isn't. At the end of the tariff wars in 2025 there was a surge in hiring, which only stopped when the Middle East conflict started. We think that surge will happen again… until the next global shock.

Deeper analysis

If you judged the market on job-board volume alone this summer, you'd call it slow. A genuine mid-year lull, compounded by regulatory uncertainty, has kept a lid on advertised roles. But that reading misses what's actually happening beneath the surface, where the leading indicators of sustainability demand — new regulation, fresh capital, and churn in senior leadership — are all firing at the same time. Hiring is a lagging indicator of each. What looks like a soft market is, in our read, a market holding its breath before a wave of first-time disclosure obligations lands.

Three forces are winding that spring.

Driver one: the disclosure wave is now a certainty, not a maybe

For two years, sustainability regulation was a moving target and employers waited. That waiting period is ending. In February 2026 the UK government published the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS), the ISSB-aligned framework that sets the shape of mandatory climate and sustainability disclosure for UK companies. In parallel, the EU has pushed ahead with a major simplification of its disclosure regime, the SFDR 2.0 review, on which the European Council agreed its negotiating position in June 202, reshaping how sustainable financial products are labelled and reported.

A large cohort of organisations are heading toward their first ISSB-aligned and UK SRS disclosures. First disclosures are the single most reliable predictor of sustainability hiring we track, because they convert a reporting obligation into a staffing requirement — someone has to own the data, the assurance and the narrative. The demand this creates is a forward signal, and it hasn't fully arrived in the hiring numbers yet. That is precisely why now, not next year, is the window.

In H1 2026 we saw a 43% rise in briefs for ESG reporting and data roles — firms working towards targets, or committing to new ones. This was mostly front-loaded to January and February, and died down when the Middle East conflict began.

Driver two: the top of the market is reshuffling

Beneath the regulation, the senior end of the market is unusually mobile. The first half of 2026 saw a cluster of senior responsible-investment departures and a run of board and chair transitions across UK-listed infrastructure trusts, wealth managers and foundations. Senior exits of this seniority rarely stay contained: they vacate hard-to-fill seats, trigger backfills at the leaver's next destination, and prompt incoming leaders to re-examine their ESG and governance priorities — each of which can start a hiring chain reaction.

The caveat is that a lot of this is on hold while the war in the Middle East continues. Macro uncertainty pauses hiring, but we think this will swing back quite hard in the second half of Q3.

Driver three: climate risk and energy security are not going away

With record-breaking weather across the globe and energy-security fears heightened, there are whispers that the media are starting to talk about climate change again. All the other drivers can be in place, but until the media are on board there will be no major growth.

So we are waiting for regulation to bite, interest rates to come down, wars to stop and the media to pick up the sustainability baton again… what can go wrong?

The sector-by-sector picture

The headline market masks wide variation. Our read across the sectors we recruit in:

**Public markets.** Stewardship and responsible-investment teams are expanding gradually across the UK, Europe and North America, even against a noisier political backdrop. UK teams in particular are building steadily now that the regulatory picture has firmed up.

**Private markets & infrastructure.** The most active corner. ESG integration continues to deepen, with demand concentrated in climate-risk, decarbonisation and impact-measurement skills — especially around newly closed, impact-labelled funds that need measurement capability from day one.

**Corporates.** The most urgent hires and the most active companies are in organisations with complex supply chains or ownership of physical assets. We have seen some super interesting mandates across real estate owner-operators, food companies, industrials and mining. Services firms are focusing more on cost cutting and AI than on any real new sustainability initiatives.

**Renewable energy & cleantech.** Demand is real but rate-sensitive. Higher financing costs and supply-chain friction have tempered growth, yet greenfield development keeps recruitment live, and genuine talent gaps persist in specialist technical roles.

**ESG & sustainability consulting.** More subdued overall, but with pockets of sharp growth — biodiversity, natural capital and nature-based solutions are drawing intense competition for a thin pool of ecology and climate-restoration specialists.

**Non-profits & foundations.** Capable of surprising the market: we've seen unexpected hiring pushes concentrated at junior and mid-levels, and senior exits at climate-focused foundations can open rare, high-impact seats.

Outlook for the second half of 2026

We expect the spring to start releasing. There is demand for new hires, but a lack of commitment due to the global uncertainties. A more positive macro picture will bring general growth and a return to a more buoyant hiring market.