The State of Talent Access & Hiring Report 2026: What the data tells us.

‍A report based on a joint survey conducted by StartMidwest, Digital Reference and Purpose Jobs

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For more than a decade, the Midwest has put forth a set of stories about its tech, entrepreneurial and innovation talent: the region produces fantastic workers and team members but often loses them too early to the coasts; it can't compete on compensation; the talent supply itself is one of the binding constraints on growth.

To test those assumptions against actual data, we partnered with Digital Reference and Purpose Jobs - two organizations operating at different points of access to talent - to survey founders and hiring leaders across the region. Digital Reference brings a verification and professional-reputation lens. Purpose Jobs sits at the intersection of purpose-driven talent and high-growth companies. And on these pages, we cover the regional startup and innovation economy as best we can using data and first-person experiences.

Together, the goal was to move past the regional anxieties that have shaped the talent conversation locally, and instead surface what the data actually tells us about how hiring works here, where it breaks, and what infrastructure may be missing.

What emerged for us was a single, structural finding:

The Midwest's hiring problem is not one of supply, it isn’t about pay and it’s not an issue of coastal-drain.

It is a discovery problem.

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Fail to Discover, Discover Failure.

Two-thirds of respondents told us their single biggest hiring challenge is finding the right people in the first place. Not paying them, not retaining them, not screening them. That should point all of us at a different set of priorities than the ones we collectively have agreed upon. We often say we started this site because the stories we tell here rarely get shared… here is yet another.

This report walks through the findings that shape that picture, and outlines what each one means for how the Midwest can build the next decade of our talent infrastructure.

For companion insights visit our partners:

• The State of Talent & Talent Technology: 2026 Ecosystem Report — Digital Reference's analysis of verification, references, and the collapse of resume trust
• The State of Purpose-Driven Hiring in the Midwest — Purpose Jobs' companion analysis (Launching May 12)

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The Midwest Discovery Gap: Visibility, Not Supply, Is the Failure Point

Most regional talent narratives assume the constraint is on the supply side - too few engineers, too few senior operators, too much pull from coastal compensation. The survey data suggests a different bottleneck. Across every level of seniority and every type of role, the dominant challenge respondents cite is structural rather than economic: the systems that connect Midwest talent to Midwest opportunity are underdeveloped, underfunded, and disproportionately reliant on personal networks that no longer scale to how hiring actually happens.

The four findings below each support that argument while also standing alone as distinct data points in their own right.

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I. Discovery - Not Cost - Is the #1 Hiring Challenge

When asked to name their single biggest hiring challenge:

• 65.1% said Discovery — finding the right people in the first place
• 18.6% said Cost — being able to afford the right people
• 4.7% said Reference checking
• 2.3% said Co-location expectations

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Discovery outpaces cost by more than 3.5x.

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Insight: The Midwest hiring conversation has been framed as a financial one - coastal salaries, capital intensity, comp benchmarks. The data places the binding constraint elsewhere. Founders don't say they can't afford the right people. They say they can't even find them.

Implication: A pay gap is an issue for the balance-sheet. But a discovery gap is about infrastructure - job boards, communities, events, employer profiles, regional media, search visibility. The two require entirely different responses, and the region may have been working towards the wrong one.

Where StartMidwest fits: Regional discovery infrastructure - editorial coverage, founder visibility, ecosystem storytelling, and the connective media tissue that lets Midwest talent and Midwest companies find each other - is the explicit remit of platforms like ours. That 65.1% data point demonstrates how network connectivity needs to move from our own cities and counties and include our nearby states.

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II. The Personal Network Paradox: Local Methods, National Searches

Personal networks dominate Midwest hiring at every level:

• 34.9% name personal networks as their primary source for entry-level roles
• 50% name personal networks as the primary source for senior-level roles
• 37.2% rate personal networks as the most effective overall sourcing method

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But the geographic scope of those searches has expanded well beyond the network's natural reach:

• 56.8% of respondents are sourcing outside their home state
• 50% are sourcing outside the Midwest entirely

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Insight: The dominant sourcing method is local-and-informal, while the actual hiring footprint is national. That would appear to be a structurally inefficient combination.

Implication: Personal networks produce strong cultural fits and lower hiring risk in tight ecosystems, but they also max out pretty early. Once the search expands beyond the region, network-based sourcing creates real costs in speed, scale, and diversity of hire. The Midwest is increasingly running national searches through a local Rolodex. Or whatever the kids are using these days.

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Where StartMidwest can fit in this narrative: We can offer connective tissue at regional scale - cross-state founder networks, profile coverage that travels beyond a single market, and discovery channels that complement personal networks rather than competing with them.

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III. The Employer Brand Blind Spot

Almost half of respondents are not investing meaningfully in employer brand:

• 27.9% describe themselves as "just getting started" on employer brand
• 20.9% say they "do not invest" in it at all
• 48.8% combined are at or near zero investment

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Recruiting budgets reinforce the pattern:

• 54.5% spend less than $10,000 annually on recruiting for full-time roles

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Insight: When this data is set next to Finding I -  that 65.1% of respondents say their #1 problem is being discovered by the right people - it’s a tad ironic. The companies most concerned about discovery are also investing the least in actually being discoverable.

Implication: Employer brand has often been treated in this region as something to think about ‘later’, or as a marketing function, or coastal indulgence. The data suggests it's a foundational driver of the discovery gap - and that the Midwest's "scrappy and humble" cultural posture has translated, at scale, into a regional under-investment in being visible.

Where StartMidwest fits: Founder profiles, company features, regional rankings, and editorial coverage are some of the lowest-cost employer-brand investments available to a Midwest startup.

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IV. Coastal Drain: Less Severe Than Headline Narrative Suggests

When asked whether they had lost staff to coastal companies:

• 50% said No
• 15.9% said Yes
• 20.5% had coastal offices themselves

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Insight: "Brain drain to Silicon Valley" is one of the most reliable framings in Midwest tech discourse — invoked in panels, regional development memos, and funding pitches alike. Among this respondent group, it appears to be substantially overstated. The companies losing staff to the coasts are actually a clear minority.

Implication: This is one survey, not a census, and so it captures a snippet of the total reality. The finding should be read as a counterweight, not a complete refutation. But it does suggest that the energy spent lamenting coastal drain may be better directed at the binding constraint the same respondents named - discovery within the region itself.

Where StartMidwest fits: Reframing regional anxieties using actual data is our core editorial territory. The coastal-drain narrative has shaped two decades of policy and ecosystem-building rhetoric; data that demonstrates a more realistic take deserves wider circulation.

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Closing Synthesis: From Discovery Gap to Connective Infrastructure

Read together, the findings describe an ecosystem that has under-invested in the basic infrastructure of being findable - employer brand, recruiting spend, discoverable channels - while leaning on personal networks that no longer match the geographic scope of how the region actually hires. The coasts are not pulling Midwest talent away in the volumes the regional narrative assumes. The bigger problem is failing to connect Midwest talent with Midwest opportunity in the first place.

Across every data point in this survey:

• the talent exists
• the companies exist
• the channels which connect them are missing

This creates a structural gap:

Talent is abundant. Visibility is scarce.

The next decade should be defined less by chasing coastal benchmarks and more in building what the region has been missing: the connective infrastructure of media, communities, employer brand investment, and discoverable channels that can help turn a strong regional talent pool into a functioning market.

StartMidwest, Digital Reference and Purpose Jobs each operate on a different layer of that infrastructure. This survey was built to map the gap between them.

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Companion analyses from this survey

Keep your eyes out for these deeper analyses:

• The Discovery Gap: Why 65% of Midwest Founders Can't Find the People They Need (coming soon)
• The Personal Network Paradox: How Midwest Startups Are Hiring Nationally Through Local Rolodexes (coming soon)
• The Employer Brand Blind Spot: The Midwest's Visibility Problem in Its Own Words (coming soon)
• Coastal Drain, Re-examined: What the Data Actually Shows (coming soon)

Companion analyses are also available from survey partners Digital Reference and Purpose Jobs.

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About this survey

The Talent Ecosystem Survey was conducted jointly by StartMidwest, Digital Reference and Purpose Jobs. Survey data was collected from late 2025 through early 2026 and reflects responses from founders, hiring managers, and executives directly responsible for talent decisions across the Midwest and broader United States. Respondents were not paid to complete the survey.

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