While increased college recruiting budgets were widespread for employers in 2022, so were decreases in staffing, according to NACE’s 2022 Recruiting Benchmarks Report.

The average overall recruiting budget for 2022 increased dramatically, from approximately $550,000 in 2021 to $830,000 in 2022, an increase of 51%. NACE research found increased hiring this past year and this could be associated with the larger budgets

Fifty percent of survey respondents reported increased budgets for 2022, with more than 21% reporting an increase that exceeded 10%.

There is a correlation between the size of company and the size of the recruiting budget. The smallest companies—those with between 1,000 and 2,500 employees—reported an average recruiting budget of $143,300. Meanwhile, organizations with more than 50,000 employees—the largest employers in the sample—reported an average recruiting budget of more than $2.6 million.

In contrast to the increases in recruiting budgets, staffing of recruiting operations appears to be decreasing. The overall average staffing component reported by respondents in this survey is 14.9 employees. This is a drop from 17.9 employees reported in the 2021 survey and 20.1 in the 2019 survey.

However, there was a slight increase in the average number of recruiters—9.0 in this survey compared with 8.5 in the 2021 survey—which indicates that staffing cuts were made elsewhere.

The 2022 Recruiting Benchmarks Report explores key aspects of university recruiting, such as the structure, staffing, focus, and execution of the efforts, and provides outcome-oriented benchmarks and metrics. The survey on which this report is based was conducted from May 9, 2022, until June 17, 2022, and was distributed to 816 organizations holding NACE membership as well as nonmembers. There were 183 NACE member respondents, representing 22.4% of eligible member respondents. An additional 27 responses were received from nonmember companies. The 2022 Recruiting Benchmarks Report is available to members through MyNACE.