Key findings

1
Law, Medicine & Finance drew the most apply clicks: 15,923 of 53,799 (29.6%), followed by Data Annotation & Labeling (17.7%) and Transcription, Audio & Speech (15.5%).
Figure 1
2
Per open role, Data Annotation & Labeling drew the most applicant interest: 12.61 apply clicks a week, 3.7x the average role. Research Studies & Surveys drew the least: 0.52 a week (0.15x).
Figure 2
3
Data Annotation & Labeling took 17.7% of apply clicks with 4.8% of open-role time. Multilingual & Localization held 24.6% of open-role time but drew 14.9% of clicks.
Figure 2
4
A role in its first 7 days drew 2.09 apply clicks a week; a role listed for more than 90 days drew 3.66 (the new role drew 43% fewer).
Figure 4
5
Roles advertising $100/hr or more drew 2.92 apply clicks per open role a week; roles under $20/hr drew 5.18 (the higher-paid role drew 44% fewer).
Figure 3
6
The most-clicked 10% of open roles took 94.2% of apply clicks; 69.4% of the 7,140 roles open during the window drew none.
Figure 6

Figure 1

Apply clicks by kind of work

Which kinds of AI training work do people apply to?

Kind of work	Apply clicks	Share of clicks	Roles applied to
Law, Medicine & Finance	15,923	29.6%	703
Data Annotation & Labeling	9,513	17.7%	120
Transcription, Audio & Speech	8,352	15.5%	322
Multilingual & Localization	8,026	14.9%	446
Coding & Software Evaluation	4,468	8.3%	175
AI Evaluation & Rating (RLHF)	3,018	5.6%	155
Math & STEM	2,798	5.2%	93
Writing & Content	707	1.3%	45
Agentic Tasks & RL Environments	390	0.7%	50
Red-Teaming & AI Safety	282	0.5%	26
Robotics & Physical-AI Data	267	0.5%	34
Research Studies & Surveys	55	0.1%	16

Sample. 53,799 apply clicks on a specific role, from 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Oct 2026.

A further 5,429 clicks went to a platform's own sign-up page rather than to one role, so they have no kind of work and are not in this figure.

Roles applied to: distinct roles that received at least one of these clicks.

Source. AITraining.jobs Research, Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition.

Figure 2

Applicant demand per open role, by kind of work

Which kinds of work are oversubscribed, and which are short of applicants?

Kind of work	Clicks per role a week	Index	Clicks	Avg open roles	Click share	Open-time share
Data Annotation & Labeling	12.61	3.70x	9,513	170	17.7%	4.8%
Writing & Content	4.34	1.27x	707	37	1.3%	1.0%
AI Evaluation & Rating (RLHF)	4.21	1.23x	3,018	162	5.6%	4.5%
Transcription, Audio & Speech	3.84	1.12x	8,352	492	15.5%	13.8%
Coding & Software Evaluation	3.69	1.08x	4,468	273	8.3%	7.7%
Law, Medicine & Finance	3.14	0.92x	15,923	1,144	29.6%	32.1%
Math & STEM	2.97	0.87x	2,798	213	5.2%	6.0%
Multilingual & Localization	2.07	0.61x	8,026	876	14.9%	24.6%
Red-Teaming & AI Safety	1.55	0.45x	282	41	0.5%	1.2%
Agentic Tasks & RL Environments	1.22	0.36x	390	72	0.7%	2.0%
Robotics & Physical-AI Data	1.04	0.30x	267	58	0.5%	1.6%
Research Studies & Surveys	0.52	0.15x	55	24	0.1%	0.7%

Sample. 53,799 apply clicks on 7,140 roles open at some point from 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Oct 2026.

Clicks per role a week = apply clicks / (days the kind's roles were open / 7). It measures competition for each opening, not the size of the market: a kind with few roles and steady interest reads high.

Index: the kind's rate divided by the rate across all open roles. 2.00x means twice the applicant interest of the average role. Click share and open-time share are the kind's share of all role clicks and of all open role-days.

Rows with fewer than 3.6 open role-days (0.5 role-weeks) are marked as a small sample and not ranked: below that the pooled rate of the kinds of work weighs more than a row's own clicks (the weight fitted on their own clicks).

Source. AITraining.jobs Research, Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition.

Figure 3

Applicant demand by advertised hourly pay

Do higher-paying roles attract more applicants?

Advertised pay	Clicks per role a week	Index	Clicks	Avg open roles
Under $20/hr	5.18	1.52x	6,904	301
$20 to $40/hr	1.52	0.45x	7,247	1,075
$40 to $60/hr	3.99	1.17x	6,732	381
$60 to $100/hr	4.66	1.37x	14,113	683
$100/hr or more	2.92	0.86x	6,184	478
No hourly rate stated	4.42	1.30x	12,619	644

Sample. 53,799 apply clicks on a specific role, from 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Oct 2026.

Pay is the hourly figure the posting advertises (the middle of a stated range). Roles paid per task or per project with no hourly figure are under 'No hourly rate stated'.

Rows with fewer than 13.4 open role-days (1.9 role-weeks) are marked as a small sample and not ranked: below that the pooled rate of the pay bands weighs more than a row's own clicks (the weight fitted on their own clicks).

Source. AITraining.jobs Research, Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition.

Figure 4

Applicant demand by how long a role has been listed

How quickly does interest in a new role fade?

Listed for	Clicks per role a week	Index	Clicks	Avg open roles
First 7 days	2.09	0.61x	3,468	375
7 to 30 days	2.51	0.74x	7,070	635
30 to 90 days	4.24	1.24x	17,057	909
More than 90 days	3.66	1.07x	25,547	1,578
Listing date unknown	2.32	0.68x	657	64

Sample. 53,799 apply clicks on a specific role, from 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Oct 2026. A role's open days are split across the bands it passed through.

Age runs from the listing date the platform's job board states, or else from the day the role first appeared in the feed. Roles that came in with a platform's back catalogue and state no date are under 'Listing date unknown'.

AITraining.jobs ranks recently listed roles higher in its default order, which adds to the first-week figure.

Rows with fewer than 22 open role-days (3.1 role-weeks) are marked as a small sample and not ranked: below that the pooled rate of the listing ages weighs more than a row's own clicks (the weight fitted on their own clicks).

Source. AITraining.jobs Research, Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition.

Figure 5

Applicant demand by who can apply

Do roles open worldwide draw more applicants than roles limited to some countries?

Location rule	Clicks per role a week	Index	Clicks	Avg open roles
Open worldwide	2.45	0.72x	7,492	691
Worldwide except listed countries	13.13	3.85x	35,526	611
Only listed countries	1.08	0.32x	10,769	2,248
No rule stated	0.24	0.07x	12	11

Sample. 53,799 apply clicks on a specific role, from 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Oct 2026.

AITraining.jobs shows each visitor the roles open in their country first and hides roles their country cannot apply to unless they choose another country, so roles limited to listed countries are seen by fewer visitors.

Rows with fewer than 1.3 open role-days (0.2 role-weeks) are marked as a small sample and not ranked: below that the pooled rate of the location rules weighs more than a row's own clicks (the weight fitted on their own clicks).

Source. AITraining.jobs Research, Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition.

Figure 6

How concentrated applicant attention is

Do apply clicks spread across many roles or pile onto a few?

Roles	Number of roles	Share of apply clicks
Most-clicked 1% of roles	72	55.1%
Most-clicked 5%	357	86.7%
Most-clicked 10%	714	94.2%
Most-clicked 20%	1,428	98.5%

Sample. 53,718 apply clicks on 7,140 roles open at some point from 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Oct 2026, the roles ranked by the clicks each received (roles with none included).

30.6% of these roles (2,185) received at least one apply click.

Source. AITraining.jobs Research, Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition.

Figure 7

Apply clicks per week

Is applicant activity rising or falling?

Week	Apply clicks	Per day
1 to 4 OctPartial week	892	223
5 to 11 Oct	1,564	223
12 to 18 Oct	3,186	455
19 to 25 Oct	26,154	3,736
26 to 31 OctPartial week	27,432	4,572

Sample. All human apply clicks on AITraining.jobs, 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Oct 2026, by ISO week (Monday to Sunday, UTC).

Weekly totals grow with AITraining.jobs's own audience as well as with the market. To compare kinds of work across weeks, read the shares in the next figure.

A week the month cuts is labelled with the days it covers and marked as partial.

Source. AITraining.jobs Research, Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition.

Figure 8

Share of apply clicks by kind of work, week by week

Is interest shifting between kinds of work?

Week	Domain Experts	Data Annotation	Transcription & Audio	Multilingual	Coding	AI Evaluation	Other
1 to 4 Oct	13%	10%	13%	20%	4%	14%	26%
5 to 11 Oct	17%	9%	17%	15%	9%	14%	19%
12 to 18 Oct	33%	6%	15%	16%	12%	9%	8%
19 to 25 Oct	33%	14%	14%	17%	9%	4%	8%
26 to 31 Oct	27%	23%	17%	13%	7%	6%	8%

Sample. Apply clicks on a specific role, 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Oct 2026, by ISO week. Each row adds up to 100% (rounded).

Columns are the six kinds of work with the most clicks over the whole period.

Rows with fewer than 33.3 clicks are marked as a small sample and not ranked: below that the average of the rows weighs more than a row's own clicks (the weight fitted on the rows' own counts).

Source. AITraining.jobs Research, Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition.

For labs, data vendors and researchers

Buy the data behind this report

The figures above are a summary. Behind them are records we collect ourselves, every day:

11,482 roles tracked, each with its history
Every role on 62 job boards, read since 13 Jul 2026 (every hour since 18 Oct 2026): its pay and place, and the first and last day it was open.
58,632 apply clicks in 28 days
Which roles people actually apply to, by field, pay and kind of work. It happens on this site, so nobody else can count it.
39 lab and vendor hiring boards
The job boards of 25 AI labs and 14 human-data vendors, read every day: who is hiring for human data, and who is hiring to buy it.

What you can buy

The records
The rows behind any figure, with their history, not only the totals.
A regular feed
The same figures every week or month, as files.
A custom cut or benchmark
Your countries, languages or fields, or your own platform against the market.

Building AI and need the experts behind this data? (you contract them yourself) or (we deliver the expert work).

Investing in AI-data companies? Hiring radar is these records role by role, every day, as files.

Method and definitions

Apply clicks made on AITraining.jobs, joined to the role clicked and the days each role was open. Every figure is computed by one database query over the window shown, the same query for the live report and for every edition. Each figure states its sample beneath it.

Apply click: A click on an apply button on AITraining.jobs that opens a platform's application page. Made by a person: automated traffic is set aside as it is recorded. Counted per click, not per person.
Role-level click: An apply click on one specific role. Clicks on a platform's general sign-up link are platform-level and have no kind of work, pay or listing age.
Open role-days: For every role, the days of the window it was listed, summed. A role open the whole of a 28-day window adds 28.
Clicks per open role a week: Role-level apply clicks divided by open role-days, times 7.
Demand index: A group's clicks per open role a week divided by the same rate across all open roles. Above 1, the group's roles draw more applicant interest than the average role.
Kind of work: Each role is classified from its title and description into one of the twelve kinds of AI training work this site tracks, from AI evaluation and coding to multilingual and audio work. Every kind links to its own page.
Listing date: The date the platform's job board gives for the posting, or else the first day the role appeared in the feed. A role that arrived with a platform's back catalogue, or came into view with a change in how this site reads its board, and gives no date has no known listing date.
Location rule: Read from each posting's location text and, where that names no country, from what the posting's own description states: open worldwide, worldwide except listed countries, only listed countries, or no rule stated.
Window: Live: the last 28 complete days, in UTC. Edition: one calendar month, in UTC.

What this data cannot tell you

Clicks measure interest among the people who use AITraining.jobs, not across the whole market.
What is shown first gets clicked more. The default order ranks the roles people already apply to most for the attention they get, and roles at partner networks, higher (the order is explained on the methodology page), and each visitor sees the roles open in their country first.
An apply click starts an application. It is not a submitted application, an acceptance or a hire.
One person can click several roles, so the figures count clicks, not people.

How the job feeds are read and roles are classified: site methodology. How fresh, complete and consistent the data is, checked every day: data quality and coverage.

Editions

The live report covers the last 28 complete days and changes every day. Each complete month is also published as an edition, frozen two days after the month ends, so a figure you cite from an edition never moves.

Live dataLast 28 complete days, recomputed daily
October 2026 edition (this page)Freezes on first reading
September 2026 editionFrozen 10 Oct 2026
August 2026 editionFrozen 10 Oct 2026

Cite and reuse

Free to quote, chart and republish under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page. This edition is frozen, so its figures will read the same later.

Citation

AITraining.jobs (2026). Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition. https://aitraining.jobs/research/applicant-demand/2026-10

BibTeX

@misc{aitrainingjobs_applicant_demand_2026_10,
  author = {{AITraining.jobs}},
  title = {Applicant Demand for AI Training Work, October 2026 edition},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://aitraining.jobs/research/applicant-demand/2026-10}},
}

Data: every figure as CSV (one line per value) and JSON, sent to your work email.Pay and open-roles data

More research

All 81 research reports