CRE Hiring Slows and Raises Shrink: Where the Jobs Still Are

Commercial real estate's job market just got its most honest headline of the year. "It has gotten worse, and everybody is feeling it," one veteran executive told Bisnow on November 5, 2026, in a story about slower hiring and smaller raises across US CRE.

I'm not going to sugarcoat that. But read past the quote and the same reporting, plus a couple of other releases from the past week, shows exactly where the work still is. If you're in property or trying to get in, that's the bit that matters.

What the numbers say

The pay data comes from RCLCO's 37th annual National Real Estate Compensation & Benefits Survey (released October 14, 2026), which covered 436 commercial real estate companies:

• 93.3% of firms raised base salaries for 2025–26, by an average of 4.0%.
• 88% plan raises for 2027, but the average drops to 3.6%.
• 54.4% expect to keep company-wide bonuses flat for performance year 2026.

Bisnow notes that 3.6% is the slowest projected growth in RCLCO's data since at least 2023, when firms were projecting 4.8%. Most bonuses will land at 10% or less.

The hiring picture is tougher at the junior end. Kent Elliott of recruiter RETS Associates told Bisnow that analyst and associate hiring is down 20% on last year. He put that down to slow deal volume and to existing staff doing more with AI. RETS research found 73% of analysts and associates now say AI has a meaningful or transformative effect on their work, up from 41% in 2025. RCLCO's Lucy Bertsch added that turnover in non-on-site roles is up 5 percentage points year over year. She was careful to say that's surely not all AI, but it may point to efficiency gains.

Recruiters also describe slower, pickier processes. Firms want candidates who "check every box," and some offers take so long that the candidate has already taken another job.

Where the jobs still are

This is the useful part. According to Kaitlin Kincaid of Keller Augusta, the roles in demand are the ones that create value in portfolios firms already own: asset management, property management, portfolio management, accounting and finance. RETS says capital raisers who can actually close a fund are also in demand, because money is hard to raise right now.

The apartment sector backs that up, but from a different angle. Recruiter Percy's Q4 property management hiring report (November 2, 2026), citing National Apartment Association data, found US apartment job postings were up 13.7% year over year in Q2. On-site roles led the way:

• Property and community managers: +13.1%
• Maintenance supervisors: +12.7%
• Leasing: +12.1%
• Maintenance technicians: +8.9%
• Corporate postings: −5.3%

Advertised maintenance tech pay rose 3.8%, ahead of the wider economy.

One of the country's largest apartment owners is following the same playbook. In its first earnings release since the AvalonBay–Equity Residential merger, Vivmark raised its expected run-rate synergies to $135 million, with initiatives across "procurement, centralized operations and maintenance" on track, Multifamily Dive reported on November 5. That's the efficiency story. The growth story is that Vivmark has $4.4 billion of projects under way, controls more than $4 billion in development rights, and expects to eventually double its development activity. Development pipelines like that need development managers, construction managers, lease-up teams and, eventually, people to run the buildings.

North of the border, Statistics Canada's October Labour Force Survey (November 6, 2026) showed overall employment flat and unemployment up to 6.7%. Construction, though, added 16,000 jobs in the month and is up 47,000 (+2.9%) on a year ago. Canada is still building.

My take

The pattern is clear. Transaction-driven seats are tight. Operations seats are open. When deals slow, firms stop hiring people to buy things and lean hard on the people who make the things they already own perform better: asset managers, property managers, maintenance leaders, accountants.

AI is part of this, and I think we should be straight about it. Tools like Grok Bot, Claude and ChatGPT are already doing first-draft underwriting, lease abstracts and market memos that junior analysts used to grind through. That doesn't mean the analyst disappears. It means the analyst who can direct those tools, check their output and explain the result to an investment committee is worth more than one who can't. The 73% figure says most juniors have already worked that out.

What AI can't do is fix a boiler, walk a tenant through a renewal or run a vacant-unit turn in two days. That's why maintenance and on-site management postings keep climbing while corporate postings fall.

I'm also optimistic about the cycle. Elliott told Bisnow he expects more optimism about transaction volume, and a bump in hiring, once the industry gets into 2027. Rates, midterms and global uncertainty don't last forever, and firms that held back on hiring will need people quickly when deals come back.

What to do this week

• If you're an analyst or associate: get visibly good with AI tools in your actual workflow, and show it in interviews with real examples. Then look sideways into asset management, where demand is holding up.
• If you're in brokerage or capital markets and it's quiet: asset management, portfolio management and property management value your market knowledge. These are good roles to move into while deals are slow.
• If you're in trades or maintenance: you have leverage. Supervisor roles are growing fastest, so ask about scope, on-call rotations and pay bands, and negotiate.
• If you're breaking in: on-site leasing and assistant property manager roles are hiring, and they're the best grounding in how real estate actually makes money.
• Everyone: expect slower processes. Follow up, stay warm with recruiters, and don't stop interviewing because one offer is "close."

Slower raises and slower hiring aren't the whole story. The work has moved, not disappeared. Browse live property management, asset management, maintenance and development roles across the US and Canada on our jobs board, and set an alert so you're first in line when the next cycle turns.