4 Trends Shaping The Circular Economy Job Market in 2025

The Circular Economy job market is booming. 

In the last five years, interest in the Circular Economy as a topic has tripled, leading to a significant rise in job opportunities. It’s estimated that the transition could create 7-8 million new jobs, especially within areas such as recycling and sustainable product design. At Circular Talent, we work closely with organisations to fill the Circular Economy skills gap, and here are four key trends we’ve seen that will impact hiring in 2025.

👩🏽🔬 Core Circular skills are becoming crucial

The transition from extraction to reuse and recycling demands the reallocation of workers from linear industries such as mining and extraction to circular sectors like repair, reprocessing, and waste management. This shift requires deep expertise and companies are increasingly looking for technical talent that can successfully support their transition. Whether it’s to implement circular product design or create a circular supply chain, core circular skills directly supporting companies with improving their process from a material perspective will be at the forefront of hiring trends. Swedish furniture store IKEA, for example, has hired a Head of Circular Development to help them transition to a fully circular model by 2030 and Nike recently hired a Director of Zero Waste and Circularity.

♻️👨🏽💻 A rise in traditional roles with a Circular Mindset

Circular Economy companies are maturing, with many startups offering circular products or services now entering the growth phase. Second-hand fashion marketplace Vinted, for example, is now valued at over €5 billion and is Lithuanian's first Unicorn startup. This shows that businesses with circularity as part of their models are no longer just a nice concept, but have true market potential. As a result, Venture Capital firms dedicated solely to the Circular Economy like Regeneration VC and Volta Circle are popping up too, investing in startups such as AI Waste Analytics platform Greyparrot and circular microplastic pollution technology Matter. 

As these companies scale, their hiring needs expand. While core circular roles remain essential, enabling roles within marketing, accounting, legal, and operations are becoming increasingly important. Employers are prioritising candidates who can merge traditional expertise with circular thinking to support business growth. For example, a circular company might hire a lawyer adept at navigating regulatory frameworks supporting circular business models.

📑 Circular Economy Reporting Experts in high demand

With companies feeling the pressure to integrate circularity into their operations, the demand for circular reporting experts has never been higher. These experts measure, track, and communicate circular performance, which is crucial to ensure compliance and competitiveness. Understanding the nuances of CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) and other sustainability reporting frameworks is now critical. This can also be seen with the rise of CSRD reporting platforms like Workiva and Coolset, which help companies get compliant and audit-ready. We predict that CE reporting experts will continue to be highly sought after in 2025.

🌍 Upskilling for a Circular future

Hiring is only one part of the equation. Upskilling and reskilling the existing workforce is essential too. HR practitioners must also apply a Circular mindset to talent, helping moving their current workforce in teams and roles where they bring the most value and not solely relying on hiring to fill their new needs.

That's why we offer a Talent Assessment Service, helping companies define current capabilities and identify future skill needs to efficiently plan for both training and hiring. In 2024, LinkedIn launched its yearly Global Green Skills Report, which analysed the activity of more than a billion LinkedIn users to identify what skills are needed for workers to transition into jobs that help green the planet. They estimate that the green talent pool needs to double by 2025 and that roughly half of jobs in the 2050 green economy will lack qualified candidates if we don’t focus on strategic, expansive upskilling.

With this coming gap envisioned, we've also seen increasingly more Universities and smaller scale educational companies launching courses linked to circularity, such as programs in circular design, resource management, and environmental reporting (more ressources and links coming soon about available circular trainings !). 

Final thoughts

As circular startups scale and traditional businesses integrate circularity, jobs will emerge across both core circular sectors and traditional industries. For businesses, having a clear understanding of what core and enabling circular skills are needed to transition or scale is essential to drive impact. Through hiring, education, upskilling, and reskilling, we can move from a linear “take-make-use-dispose” model to a regenerative future. 

At Circular Talent, we believe people are the key enablers of the transition to a circular economy. We specialise in helping organisations find and hire the right professionals to support their circular transition. Our unique expertise combines talent management with a deep understanding of the circular economy, ensuring tailored solutions for each client.

Lou Tamaehu-Plovier

Founder at Circular Talent