The Aid Sector Job Market Isn't Waiting for September
Analysis of 24 months of ReliefWeb recruitment data suggests that, although the aid sector job market has contracted significantly, recruitment continues during the summer months, challenging the assumption that professionals should wait until September to restart their job search.
Every summer, I notice the same pattern.
Conversations about careers become quieter. Professionals engage less, postpone career decisions and often assume that recruitment will only resume once everyone returns from holiday in September.
It is an understandable assumption.
Decision-makers take annual leave. Teams operate with reduced capacity. Recruitment processes may move more slowly. After months of uncertainty across the aid sector, many professionals feel they have earned the right to take a break and wait for the market to "restart."
But this year, I found myself asking a different question.
What if the market is not actually waiting for September?
An observation that made me curious
As a humanitarian career consultant, I spend a significant amount of time following labour-market developments.
Not because I believe anyone can predict the future, but because the advice I give clients must reflect the market they are applying to—not the market that existed two or three years ago.
One thing surprised me this summer.
Since founding Humanitarian Career Consulting, this is the first summer in which the vast majority of my ongoing clients have chosen to continue working on their careers throughout July and August instead of putting everything on hold.
At the same time, I have continued welcoming new clients who have decided that waiting until September is not the right strategy for them.
This is, of course, only my own professional observation.
It is not evidence that the entire market has changed.
But it made me wonder whether professionals are gradually adapting to a labour market that no longer follows the patterns many of us were used to.
So I decided to look beyond my own impressions.
The aid sector labour market has changed
There is little debate about the broader picture.
Over the past eighteen months, the humanitarian and development sector has experienced one of its most challenging periods in recent history.
Major donor funding reductions, organisational restructuring, hiring freezes and workforce cuts have significantly reduced the number of available opportunities.
Public reporting from organisations such as the OECD and OCHA, alongside specialist humanitarian media, consistently points towards the same conclusion:
The market has become smaller, more competitive and more selective.
That reality is now widely recognised.
What receives much less attention is how recruitment behaves throughout the year within this new environment.
Many professionals continue to believe that July and August are effectively “dead months” for recruitment and that serious hiring only begins again in September.
I wanted to know whether the data supported that assumption.
Looking beyond my LinkedIn feed
Rather than relying on my LinkedIn algorithm or personal impressions, I reviewed monthly job-posting data from ReliefWeb.
The analysis presented here is based on data compiled by humanitarian data analyst Jesús Baena, who has been tracking monthly ReliefWeb vacancies since mid-2024 through his public dashboard.
I am grateful to Jesús for generously sharing the underlying dataset used in this article and for making his work available to the humanitarian community.
The figures revealed something I did not expect.
In 2024, the combined number of job postings during July and August was almost identical to the combined total for September and October.
In 2025, July and August generated more job postings than the September–October period that followed.
These figures do not prove that every summer is more active than autumn.
Nor do they suggest that the aid sector labour market is recovering.
But they do challenge one very common assumption.
To examine this assumption, I analysed 24 months of ReliefWeb job-posting data. The results are shown below.
Monthly ReliefWeb Job Postings
The data does not show that every summer is more active than autumn, nor that the aid sector job market is recovering.
It does, however, challenge one common assumption:
Recruitment does not simply stop during the summer months.
A different recruitment rhythm
The humanitarian and development labour market no longer behaves as predictably as it once did.
Funding decisions increasingly respond to specific crises and rapidly changing priorities rather than following regular annual planning cycles.
Recruitment often happens in concentrated waves.
Short-term projects, surge deployments, consultancy opportunities and specialised technical positions may appear with relatively little notice.
Some vacancies are filled rapidly.
Others never become widely visible because organisations recruit through talent pools, internal mobility, rosters or existing professional networks.
In other words, the market has not stopped.
It has become less predictable.
What this means for Aid professionals
If your current contract is ending…
If you are looking for your next deployment…
If you are considering a transition into another organisation or another type of role…
If you are hoping that September will somehow “restart” your job search…
I would encourage you to think differently.
August is not simply a month to wait.
It can be a month to apply actively when the right opportunities appear. It can also be a month to prepare:
Review your CV before the vacancy you want is published.
Strengthen your LinkedIn profile.
Reconnect with former colleagues.
Map organisations recruiting in your areas of expertise.
Follow the evolution of the market instead of assuming that nothing is happening.
The goal is not to submit more applications.
The goal is to be ready when the right opportunity appears.
This is not a recovery story
It is important not to overinterpret the data.
The aid sector labour market remains significantly smaller than it was before the funding crisis.
Competition remains exceptionally strong.
Many organisations continue to face severe financial constraints, while thousands of highly qualified professionals compete for fewer positions.
Nothing in this analysis suggests otherwise.
What the data does suggest is that many professionals may still be making career decisions based on assumptions that no longer reflect today’s recruitment patterns.
Waiting until September because “nothing happens during the summer” may be one of those assumptions.
My conclusion
One of the lessons I learned during my years in humanitarian work is that timing matters.
Not only during emergencies, but also in careers.
The aid sector labour market has changed.
It is smaller.
It is more selective.
It moves differently than it used to.
That means our career strategies must evolve as well.
If there is one message I hope humanitarian and development professionals take away from this analysis, it is this:
Do not disappear during the summer because you assume the market has stopped.
Use this period to understand where the market is moving, prepare your professional positioning and be ready before the opportunity you have been waiting for appears.
Because in today’s aid sector, opportunities do not necessarily wait for September.
Neither should your career.
Chahrazed Anane, Founder of Humanitarian Career Consulting
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Sources
OECD. A historic decline in foreign aid: Preliminary 2025 ODA data, 9 April 2026.
OCHA. Global Humanitarian Overview 2026.
Devex. How aid cuts hit development jobs in 2025
ReliefWeb monthly job-posting data (June 2024–June 2026), compiled by Jesús Baena through his public dashboard and shared with the author's permission.
