Indeed’s US revenue rose 33% as hiring stalled; revenue per job posting rose 37%

01How a job site makes more from fewer jobs

Recruit’s measure, US ARPJ, is US revenue divided by the average daily number of US job postings on Indeed, as counted by the Indeed Hiring Lab.³ The count includes free listings and jobs Indeed collects from employers’ career sites, so the company stresses it is “not the average unit price per sponsored job ad”.⁴ The revenue comes mostly from Sponsored Jobs, paid ads sold as Standard and Premium packages, plus tools such as Smart Sourcing, Smart Screening and Employer Branding. Premium Sponsored Jobs is, in Recruit’s words, “the primary driver of US revenue growth” this year.⁴ The company says the model has moved from a search engine selling pay-per-click job ads to AI matching that does part of a recruiter’s sourcing and screening.⁴

In August its chief executive, Hisayuki Idekoba, split the rise for small and mid-sized employers into roughly equal thirds: more paying clients, more sponsored jobs per client, and a higher price per job.⁴

02Where the margin came from

The HR Technology segment, Indeed’s business, turned 47.5% of its revenue into EBITDA+S, Recruit’s profit measure before depreciation and share-based pay, up from 36.5% a year earlier; EBITDA+S rose 76.7% to ¥449.2bn. Recruit credits “revenue growth and appropriate control of personnel expenses”.¹⁵ Its summary puts it more plainly: personnel expenses were flat.² In April–June, pay and outsourcing together were about 37% of the segment’s revenue, against about 48% a year earlier, its finance chief said in August.⁴

03What to watch

Recruit now expects HR Technology revenue of US$11.92bn for the year to March, up 23.2%, against US$11.48bn in August, and US revenue up 31.2% with revenue per posting up 33%. It kept the group’s guidance unchanged, saying the effect is limited.¹² The outlook has US growth slowing to 29.1% in October–March.¹

The risk is the client’s bill. “Average spend per client has risen rapidly over a short period,” Idekoba said in August, adding that Recruit would “monitor client satisfaction very closely”.⁴ For an employer, the figures mean the same vacancy costs more to advertise on Indeed than it did a year ago, and the company is selling its AI tools as a substitute for recruiter hours: one healthcare client, Idekoba said, found they did the work of “several full-time recruiters”.⁴ Whether AI is changing hiring itself is the question PhysicsWallah’s falling headcount raised in India this week.