The L&D Talent Shortage Isn’t Where You Think It Is

There are plenty of people with L&D skills in the market.

We checked.

When we compared the capabilities employers ask for in roles posted to Teamed’s job board with the capabilities candidates list on their resumes—matching supply and demand to the same year—candidate supply equaled or exceeded employer demand across nine of the eleven themes we measured.

Consider a few examples:

• AI: 46.2% of 2026 resumes vs. 43.3% of recent job postings
• Analytics: 30.2% vs. 11.2%
• Storyline: 55.3% vs. 29.9%
• xAPI: 21.0% vs. 7.2%
• Accessibility: 36.3% vs. 41.3%, making supply and demand relatively close

These figures measure keyword matches in the roles posted to our board and the resumes we hold. They tell us what employers ask for and what candidates present—not whether every person mentioning a skill can perform it at the level a particular role requires.

Still, the overall pattern is clear.

On most individual L&D capabilities we measured, the people exist.

So why do hiring managers still struggle to find the right person?

Because the L&D talent shortage often isn’t about the number of candidates available.

It’s about finding the right combination of capabilities in the same person.

General L&D Talent Isn’t Necessarily Scarce

“Instructional designer” can describe two professionals with completely different backgrounds.

One might specialize in leadership development and virtual instructor-led training.

Another might spend most of their time building technical eLearning in Storyline.

Someone else may specialize in sales enablement, healthcare education, compliance, higher education, customer education, or learning strategy.

They’re all instructional designers.

They’re not necessarily interchangeable.

That’s where many L&D searches become difficult.

A company may think it needs an instructional designer.

Once the role is unpacked, what it actually needs might be:

An instructional designer with clinical education experience who can write for healthcare professionals and build independently in Articulate Rise.

Each individual capability may be available in the market.

The combination is much more specific.

And that changes the size of the realistic candidate pool.

The Shortage Is Often at the Intersection of Skills

This is an important distinction between what our data can measure and what we see through recruiting.

Our supply-and-demand analysis looks at individual themes across job postings and resumes. It does not prove how scarce every possible combination of skills is.

But our recruiting experience consistently shows that searches become more difficult when employers need several distinct capabilities in one person.

For example:

• Instructional design and advanced Storyline development
• Learning strategy and hands-on production
• Clinical or technical knowledge and learning design
• LMS administration and reporting or analytics
• Sales enablement and relevant industry knowledge
• Strong writing and visual design judgment
• Facilitation and deep subject matter expertise

Individually, those capabilities may not be particularly difficult to find.

The challenge is finding them in the same person, at the right level of proficiency, for the right rate, location, working arrangement, and availability.

Every additional must-have narrows the pool.

That’s why an organization can receive hundreds of applications and still feel like there is a talent shortage.

The issue isn’t necessarily applicant volume.

It’s fit.

There Are Real L&D Skills Gaps—But They May Not Be the Ones You Expect

The data does show exceptions.

The clearest is customer education.

Customer education appears in 3.5% of recent roles posted to Teamed’s board, compared with 2.2% of 2026 candidate resumes.

Among the themes we measured, it is the only one where employer demand clearly runs ahead of candidate supply.

That’s notable because customer education sits at an interesting intersection itself.

These roles can require someone who understands learning design while also being comfortable with customers, product adoption, SaaS environments, business metrics, and sometimes customer success or enablement.

The terminology may also contribute to the gap. An L&D professional may have relevant transferable skills without describing their experience as “customer education” on a resume.

Either way, it is one area where our data shows a genuine supply-demand imbalance.

There is also a smaller gap around named certifications: 3.1% of postings request them, compared with 1.5% of 2026 resumes carrying one.

These aren’t enormous percentages.

But that’s precisely why specificity matters.

Saying “there is an L&D talent shortage” hides what is actually happening.

Some capabilities are abundantly represented. Some are relatively balanced. A small number show genuine gaps. And some roles become difficult because of the combination of requirements rather than any single scarce skill.

Those are very different hiring problems.

Sometimes the Problem Is the Job Description

There’s another reason organizations experience an apparent talent shortage: they’re searching for a unicorn.

A job description might ask one person to be a:

• Learning strategist
• Instructional designer
• Graphic designer
• Video editor
• Storyline developer
• LMS administrator
• Project manager
• Facilitator
• Data analyst

People with several of those capabilities certainly exist.

People who are genuinely strong across all of them—and want the role at the salary or contract rate being offered—form a considerably smaller group.

Before concluding that the market lacks talent, ask:

Does one person actually need to do all of this?

Separate the requirements into three categories:

Must have: What does this person need to do successfully from the beginning?

Can learn: What could a strong candidate reasonably develop after joining?

Can live elsewhere: What capability could be handled by another team member, specialist contractor, vendor, or shared resource?

That exercise can turn an impossible search into a much more realistic one.

Tool Proficiency Is a Good Example

Consider Storyline.

If you looked only at candidate availability, you might expect Storyline talent to be difficult to find because it remains one of the most recognizable technical requirements in instructional design.

Our data suggests otherwise.

Storyline appears on 55.3% of 2026 candidate resumes, compared with 29.9% of recent job postings.

The issue isn’t necessarily finding someone who says they know Storyline.

The hiring challenge is determining what “knows Storyline” actually means for your role.

Do you need someone who can edit existing courses?

Build standard interactions independently?

Develop complex branching scenarios?

Troubleshoot variables and triggers?

Create accessible learning within technical constraints?

Lead the learning design as well as the development?

Those are different levels of capability hiding behind the same keyword.

A resume match tells you where to start.

It doesn’t tell you whether you’ve found the person you need.

Specialization Matters More as L&D Becomes More Complex

Today’s learning teams can work across AI enablement, accessibility, learning analytics, sales enablement, customer education, compliance, LMS ecosystems, performance consulting, leadership development, and highly specialized technical or clinical content.

That makes broad L&D experience valuable.

It also creates more opportunities for specialization.

For hiring managers, this changes the recruiting question.

Don’t start with:

“Where can we find more instructional designers?”

Start with:

“Which capability are we actually missing?”

Then go one step further:

“Which of those capabilities genuinely need to exist in the same person?”

You may discover that the talent isn’t impossible to find.

You simply need a more precise definition of who you’re looking for.

Before Calling It a Talent Shortage, Check the Role

If you’re struggling to fill an L&D position, work through the requirements before assuming the market is the problem.

Ask:

Are we hiring for a clear role?
Could a candidate understand what they would actually spend most of their time doing?

Which capabilities are genuinely essential?
Not useful. Not ideal. Essential.

Are we confusing familiarity with expertise?
“Storyline experience” and “advanced independent Storyline development” are different requirements.

Have we bundled multiple jobs together?
Would the role make more sense if specialist work were separated?

Are our rate, salary, location, and working arrangements realistic for the combination we’re requesting?

Are we searching under the right title?
The person you need may describe themselves differently from the title your organization uses internally.

Only after answering those questions can you tell whether you have a talent shortage—or a role-definition problem.

The Real Advantage Is Knowing What You’re Looking For

General recruiting approaches can work well for general hiring needs.

Specialist roles are different.

Finding the right L&D professional requires understanding the difference between someone who has used Storyline and someone who can build complex interactions independently.

Between someone who has worked in healthcare and someone who understands clinical education.

Between someone who has created customer-facing training and someone who understands customer education as a business function.

Between someone who produces training and someone who can diagnose whether training is needed at all.

That’s why specialist L&D recruiting isn’t simply about having a larger database of candidates.

It’s about understanding the capabilities behind the job titles—and knowing which combinations actually matter.

The L&D Talent Shortage Needs a More Precise Definition

The data doesn’t support a simple story that L&D talent is broadly scarce.

Across nine of the eleven themes we measured, candidate supply equals or exceeds current employer demand.

For analytics, Storyline, and xAPI, candidate mentions substantially outnumber the roles asking for them.

AI is roughly balanced.

Accessibility is relatively close.

Customer education is the clearest exception.

The bigger hiring challenge is often what happens between those numbers: the organization needs a particular combination of experience, capability, context, availability, and commercial fit.

That’s a much narrower problem than “there aren’t enough L&D professionals.”

And it’s a more useful one to solve.

Before expanding your search, adding another qualification, or deciding the talent simply isn’t out there, get precise about the capability gap.

The people may already exist. The harder part is knowing exactly which one you need.

Looking for Specialized L&D Talent?

Teamed helps organizations find instructional designers, learning strategists, eLearning developers, LMS specialists, facilitators, subject matter experts, and other learning professionals across contract and permanent hiring needs.

Whether you need one specialist capability or a harder-to-find combination, start by defining the work—not adding more requirements to the title.

Tell Teamed what capability your team is missing →