How often do employers mention a visa, a work permit or another language?
Global hiring is discussed far more than it is advertised. We counted how often postings mention visa sponsorship, demand that you already have the right to work, or simply are not written in English — and we report the silence too, because the silence is the point.
Key figures
| Measure | ||
|---|---|---|
| Mention visa sponsorship | 0.9% | about 1 in 111 postings |
| Require existing work authorisation | 0.4% | you must already have the right to work |
| Not written in English | 21.4% | heuristic language detection |
| Written in English | 78.6% | |
| Countries with open roles | 82 | as reported by the source platform |
Frequently asked
Does silence mean no sponsorship?
No — and that is the finding. Most postings say nothing either way: 0.9% mention sponsorship, 0.4% ask for existing authorisation, and the rest are simply quiet. If you need sponsorship, the posting usually will not tell you; you have to ask.
How is language detected?
Heuristically, from the posting text. It reliably separates English from non-English, but does not name the specific language.
Why does this matter?
Because it sets the odds. 21.4% of postings are not written in English, so a job search is less monolingual than it looks — and the visa question is almost never answered up front.
Press, research and custom cuts: [email protected] · Cite as: DeUnemployment, “Visas, work authorisation and language in job postings — 2026-11-06”, https://deunemployment.com/data/working-across-borders (2026-11-06).
Where this connects. Outside work that defines or studies the measure on this page:
- Migration, vacancies and labour market skills — Migration Observatory, University of Oxford
- 'English not required': how language flexibility shapes opportunities for migrants — Indeed Hiring Lab
Need a different cut? Every figure on this page comes from one index, so we can extract almost any slice on request — a city, a role, an industry, a time window, or a comparison between platforms. Tell us what you need at [email protected] and we will pull it, publish it with its method, and hand you the numbers. All we ask in return is a citation.
More data
- Listing age by country
- Hiring market structure
- Key figures
- All datasets & measures
- State of Jobs — monthly report
- Data health — what our corpus can vouch for
- Request a custom cut
“Still listed” is a listing-age measure from the source publish date, not a verification that a role is open; link liveness is measured separately. The percentages are the October 2026 edition (full pass, measured 2026-10-06); the index counts are rebuilt by every nightly update, most recently 2026-11-06. Page generated 2026-11-06.