Job offers April 2026
The era of major declines in the job market is over! Check where the number of job openings is growing and why companies are demanding more experience.
summary of the report “Job offers in Poland” (71st edition, April 2026), prepared by Grant Thornton in cooperation with Element:
1. General situation on the market (The market is bouncing off the bottom)
In April 2026, 264,689 new job offers appeared on the 50 largest recruitment portals in Poland.
This is a decline of only 1% year over year – the lowest drop in ten months, which signals a clear slowdown in the downward trend and market stabilization (for comparison, in February the pace of declines was twice as bad).
Although the number of offers still falls short of results from previous years (267 thousand in 2024 and 269 thousand in 2023), experts predict that May may bring a return to positive growth.
2. Situation in large cities
For the first time in a long while, annual increases in the number of ads were recorded in 6 of the 10 surveyed metropolitan areas:
Leaders in y/y growth: Warsaw (+5%), Wrocław (+5%), Kraków (+4%), Gdańsk (+3%), Poznań (+3%), and Szczecin (+2%).
Most offers per 1,000 residents: Katowice (24.7) and Warsaw (24.6).
Declines: Metropolitan areas more strongly tied to German industry are still feeling the crisis, though less so than before (Katowice -4%, Bydgoszcz -3%, Łódź -2%). The worst result in terms of the number of ads per 1,000 residents was recorded by Łódź (7.7).
3. Industries – growth and declines
Health (+12% y/y): The highest growth in the market, driven by demographics and staffing shortages (demand for paramedics up 14%, doctors up 13%, and nurses up 9%).
Marketing/Sales (+2% y/y) and Law (+2% y/y): Back in the black after many months of declines.
Finance (+1% y/y): Stabilization after a long wave of process automation.
IT (-1% y/y): Declines have slowed sharply, but there is a clear shift in demand toward AI and cybersecurity specialists.
Manual work (-5% y/y): Problems in supply chains and the German automotive sector are still being felt (although in February the decline was -7%).
4. Requirements and Benefits (The end of the “arms race”)
Fewer benefits: The average number of benefits in job ads fell to 5.3 (the lowest since the 2020 pandemic). Employers are less likely to offer training (down from 75% to 49% of ads) and flexible working hours (down from 35% to 25%). Medical packages (67%) and sports packages (51%) remain standard.
Higher requirements: Although the overall average number of requirements is 4.6, the requirement for professional experience has risen sharply – it already appears in 68% of job offers (up from 62%). Companies are looking for fully independent specialists, which makes it much harder for people without experience to enter the market.
