Turnover and hiring frictions in cybersecurity teams: a literature synthesis and secondary data analysis (2019-2026)

Objective. To synthesise the evidence on voluntary turnover and hiring difficulties in cybersecurity teams, separating what public data can measure from what can only be inferred. Methods. Structured literature synthesis with a scoping approach, carried out by a single reviewer (1,989 records in the main flow and 44 included studies) and analysis of six secondary sources: BLS OEWS and JOLTS, Eurostat, O*NET, 219 job postings and bibliographic metadata. We estimated gaps with HAC errors, compound annual growth rates, country-paired contrasts with bootstrap, a Huber robust regression with exact matching and a monthly stock-flow model. This version recomputes 113 derived figures from their primary figures and checks all 45 references against their bibliographic records. Results. Employment in the core occupation (SOC 15-1212) grew 7.21% a year between 2019 and 2025 and its mean nominal wage 4.09%, below the 4.53% of all occupations. Depending on the definition of the workforce, its size varies by a factor of 30.22. JOLTS industry proxies show no relative increase in quits after 2020, and the series weighted by the occupation's sector composition remains almost flat (2.488 and 2.455% a month). In eight European countries, the job vacancy rate of Information and communication exceeds that of Finance and insurance by 1.33 points (8 of 8 countries; 95% CI 0.83 to 2.00) and is indistinguishable from that of professional services. Postings require a median of five years of experience, and 63.3% of entry or mid-level postings with stated experience ask for at least three. With the flow model, annual hiring demand lies between 37,347 and 77,203 people, 70.0% to 85.5% of them replacing exits. In an exploratory subsample of 59 remote postings, almost all from the United States, seniority is associated with large premiums and degrees and certifications show no robust associations. Of the 113 audited figures, 105 match, 4 cannot be verified without microdata and 4 are corrected. The metadata of 12 references were corrected and one study whose record could not be located was excluded. Conclusions. The aggregate evidence fits employment expansion with a diluted wage premium better than a generalised shortage, and it cannot estimate the workforce's turnover because no public source measures exits or their destination.