The Bulgarian labor market showed signs of movement in August, with the number of job postings increasing by 5.9 percent compared to July. These data are part of the regular monthly analysis by HR company and career site JobTiger, provided to BTA today. This growth occurred despite the traditionally low activity typical of the holiday month of August and successfully compensated for a significant portion of the losses recorded in July.
Despite the positive momentum, the total number of offers remains below June levels and is 9.4 percent lower compared to August 2025. Development within the month itself was optimistic, with the number of active offers gradually rising from about 35,000 at the beginning of August to over 37,000 by the end of the month. This trend confirms a recovery from the previous month, but it has not yet managed to correct the less favorable year-on-year picture.
An important feature of August was the trend reversal in a number of sectors that were the main drivers of the decline in July. The main changes by sector are as follows:
- "Hospitality and Catering": the most significant growth of 16.6 percent, amounting to 726 new postings, which allows the sector to recover a large part of its lost ground;
- "Manufacturing": an increase of 416 postings, representing growth of 6.4 percent;
- "Trade and Sales": an increase of 5.7 percent, or 497 more postings;
- Healthcare and Pharmacy: an increase of about 10.5 percent;
- Construction: growth of about 4.4 percent;
- Administrative and Service Activities: an increase of about 4.1 percent;
- IT sector: the only sector that remained almost unchanged, with a minimal decline of about 1 percent compared to July.
Despite the monthly increase, long-term statistics show significant differences between individual industries compared to the situation a year ago:
- Manufacturing: shows resilience with growth of about 4.4 percent above August 2025 levels;
- Healthcare and Pharmacy: the volume of offers remains practically unchanged;
- Hospitality and Catering: the annual decline is relatively limited to about 4.1 percent;
- Accounting, Audit and Finance: a decline of about 5.5 percent;
- Trade and Sales: 9.1 percent below last year's levels;
- Construction: a significant decline of about 24 percent;
- IT sector: 26 percent below levels from a year ago;
- Marketing and Advertising: a decline of about 29 percent.
Regional activity was also distinct, with Ruse demonstrating the strongest monthly growth among the six monitored regional centers at about 17.5 percent. The top three are rounded out by Stara Zagora with 10.8 percent and Plovdiv with 9.1 percent. In Sofia, offers grew by about 6.9 percent, and in Burgas by 5.7 percent. Varna was the only city not to see growth, with the number of postings remaining almost unchanged, with a minimal decline of 0.4 percent. Sofia remains the dominant market, concentrating about 39 percent of all monitored postings in the country.
The market for remote and work-from-home jobs reached 2,472 postings in August, which is an increase of 3.5 percent compared to the 2,389 offers in July. Since this growth is slower than the overall market, the share of these positions has decreased slightly. Compared to August 2025, there is a negative trend with about 25 percent fewer offers for this type of employment. The distribution by sector for remote positions is as follows:
- IT sector: leader with about a 44 percent share;
- Administrative and Service Activities: about 23 percent;
- Outsourcing/BPO: nearly 18 percent.