The talent market has been surprisingly resilient despite the ongoing war, but the real stress test lies in the weeks ahead

Weeks into the regional war, recruiters and employers say hiring across the UAE has not frozen, expats are not rushing for the exits, and international mandates are still moving. The harder question is whether that holds if disruption starts looking structural rather than temporary.

In context: For years, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have been trying to turn transient expat inflows into something stickier. Long-term visas, wider foreign ownership rules, and family-friendly residency reforms were designed to convince global talent that the Gulf was no longer just a stopover.

That model is now facing an early stress test: The current conflict is testing how durable that shift really is, particularly in cities where foreigners account for about 90% of the population.

The first week looked almost entirely normal, Trefor Murphy, founder and CEO of recruitment advisory firm Cooper Fitch, tells EnterpriseAM. “Every interview that was booked in happened. There was literally no change,” he says, adding that while many briefly shifted to working from home, hiring pipelines stayed intact and offices have since returned to normal rhythms.

Why you should listen to Murphy: Cooper Fitch advises employers across the GCC on senior hiring and workforce strategy, with headquarters in Dubai and more than half its business tied to Saudi Arabia, giving it a wide lens across multinational and regional hiring mandates.

No client has asked Cooper Fitch to halt recruitment because of recent events. “Not a single client has come to us to say they’ve decided they’re not going ahead with hiring plans,” Murphy says, noting that most employers still appear to assume disruption will be contained quickly enough not to justify rewriting expansion plans. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is seeing “zero impact” so far, with international recruitment continuing normally.

Dubai-based recruitment agency TASC Outsourcing backs that up: “Despite broader regional uncertainty, hiring demand in the UAE remains relatively robust,” Anil Singh, chief business officer at TASC Outsourcing, tells EnterpriseAM, adding that companies continue investing in key talent because of the country’s strategic position and business stability.

By the numbers:

As we previously covered, the UAE entered this period from a position of unusual hiring strength. Cooper Fitch’s latest Gulf Employment Index showed UAE employment growing 3% q-o-q in 3Q 2025 — the fastest in the GCC — while annual population inflows of 200k-300k kept demand elevated. Nearly half of UAE firms still planned to add headcount, with hiring divergence tied more to project execution than wider macro sentiment, Murphy previously told us.

Yes, but: As the war drags on, the hiring picture is becoming harder to read. Hiring in some sectors including aviation and hospitality unexpectedly accelerated for a period, while others softened slightly, though not enough to suggest a clear pattern, Murphy said.

“When something like this happens, you start looking at data by the minute, by the hour — and that’s not a good way to look at anything,” he says, arguing that short-term fluctuations still resemble ordinary weekly volatility more than a genuine market shift.

What makes the picture harder to read: In the UAE, movement often looks less like exit and more like rerouting — a pattern Zacky Sajjad, director of business development and client relations at Cavendish Maxwell, tells EnterpriseAM also applies to capital flows. “Capital does not retreat indiscriminately. It reallocates toward environments that offer clarity, liquidity, and long-term economic vision,” Sajjad says.

As the war drags on, the picture could look less positive

The risk increases by the week: Murphy says the first thing to weaken in a prolonged scenario would not necessarily be hiring itself, but risk appetite. “If we’re still in exactly the same situation two weeks later, then I think it’ll have a greater impact,” he says.

International firms will likely react first: Multinationals typically tighten faster through slower approvals, more cautious treasury decisions, and reduced lending appetite before visible hiring freezes appear. Local firms, Murphy says, historically show greater tolerance for operating through uncertainty and tend to accelerate again once conditions stabilize.

That caution is already showing up in how firms frame hiring decisions. “Multinational firms are generally taking a more measured approach, prioritizing strategic roles,” Singh says, while senior executives are also seeking more clarity on organizational stability and employee support before making moves.

There is also a more sensitive threshold beneath that: Safety. Murphy says the UAE’s appeal has always rested partly on being able to offer top global talent not just opportunity, but security. “If you remove that safety, people will look at things and look at your options for you and your family,” he says, suggesting that prolonged disruption without civilian spillover is one scenario, but visible escalation into residential life would change the equation much faster.

That said, there’s a window for “bulletproof” status

The on-ground picture therefore matters more than headline noise. “Roads are super busy. Parks are full. Playgrounds are full of kids,” Murphy says — a contrast he argues matters psychologically for employers, investors, and incoming talent alike.

That resilience may ultimately reinforce the UAE’s position if disruption remains contained. If the current period ends without major civilian impact, Murphy argues, Dubai and Abu Dhabi could emerge with an even stronger reputation for resilience, adding another stress test to a post-pandemic credibility story that already helped cement the UAE as the region’s leading hiring market.

And that resilience has been built deliberately: “Dubai’s — and the wider UAE’s — performance during recent regional tensions demonstrates that safe-haven status is built through deliberate strategy rather than circumstance,” Sajjad says, pointing to policy consistency, world-class infrastructure, and deep global connectivity as the factors that have “strengthened the market’s ability to absorb volatility.”

Those same fundamentals are what businesses will keep watching now: “Governance standards, transparency, regulatory certainty, and sustained economic diversification,” Sajjad argues, are increasingly what define the GCC’s competitive edge, making resilience “an active advantage” rather than a passive outcome.

So, add bulletproof to the list of UAE attractions? “If this is resolved in a month and we’ve had no significant impact, Dubai and Abu Dhabi would be considered bulletproof,” Murphy says. For Sajjad, emerging strongly from this period would be a reinforcement of “[the Gulf’s] role within the emerging global geography of capital.”

This article was originally published in Enterprise AM.