Job offers in Poland, September 2026: growth without industry

2026-10-12

In September 2026, employers posted 269,436 new job ads across the 50 largest recruitment portals in Poland, 2% more than a year earlier and 5% more than in August. It is the fourth consecutive month of year-over-year growth. That is what the 75th edition of Grant Thornton’s report “Job Offers in Poland” shows, with data collected by the Element recruitment system. The growth is uneven, though. Healthcare and office jobs are driving it, and manual work is the only industry in the red. In my commentary in the report I write that the Polish job market is growing without industry, and I expand on that below. The full report is a Polish-language PDF you can download at the end of this post. If you read Polish, there is also a Polish version of this article.

Key data from the report

Employers published 269,436 ads in September, 4,111 more than in September 2025, when the portals recorded 265,325 offers. Compared with August, the count rose by 12,390. That monthly increase matters, because September often brings a drop as seasonal jobs in farming and tourism come to an end. According to the report, that is what happened in September 2022, 2023 and 2024. This year the market picked up after the summer.

Against earlier years, this September looks average. The result beats 2020 (268,000), 2023 (257,000) and 2025 (265,000), but trails 2019 (297,000), 2021 (323,000), 2022 (313,000) and 2024 (288,000). Grant Thornton sees grounds for moderate optimism, and in its commentary points out that the number of ads alone does not tell us whether companies are creating new jobs or filling vacancies left by people who quit. I agree with that caveat. I covered the August data and my commentary on it in the previous post.

Cities: half up, half down

In August, all ten cities in the study grew. September looks clearly worse on that front. Five metro areas grew year over year, led by Warsaw (+8%), Wrocław (+4%) and Łódź (+3%). The other five lost ground: Szczecin and Bydgoszcz by 2% each, and Gdańsk, Katowice and Lublin by 1% each. With 44,220 ads, Warsaw accounts for more than 16% of all new offers in the country and keeps pulling away from the rest.

City	Offers Sep 2026	Change y/y	Offers per 1,000 residents
Warsaw	44,220	+8%	23.7
Kraków	16,376	+2%	20.3
Wrocław	12,502	+4%	18.6
Gdańsk	10,113	-1%	20.7
Poznań	9,293	+2%	17.3
Katowice	6,330	-1%	22.8
Łódź	5,496	+3%	8.5
Szczecin	4,363	-2%	11.3
Lublin	3,410	-1%	10.4
Bydgoszcz	3,211	-2%	9.9

Per thousand residents, the ten largest cities averaged 16.3 offers. In August Katowice led, and now Warsaw is on top with 23.7, ahead of Katowice at 22.8. Łódź is again at the bottom with 8.5 offers per thousand people, even though its number of ads grew by 3%.

Industries: healthcare grows fastest again

Six of the seven industries in the study are up. Healthcare leads again with 14% growth, as offers rose from 2,941 to 3,360. Doctors were sought in 1,893 ads, 16% more often than a year ago, nurses in 1,223 (+13%) and paramedics in 193 (+14%). Marketing and sales grew by 5%, HR and IT by 3% each, legal by 2% and finance by 1%. Within IT, demand is rising fastest for cybersecurity specialists, from 42 to 47 offers.

Industry	Sep 2025	Sep 2026	Change y/y
Healthcare	2,941	3,360	+14%
Marketing / Sales	1,202	1,266	+5%
HR	1,045	1,076	+3%
IT	1,513	1,561	+3%
Legal	397	405	+2%
Finance	2,248	2,280	+1%
Manual work	23,749	22,989	-3%

Manual work is still by far the largest group, with 22,989 offers, but it is the only one in decline, down 3%. Offers for warehouse workers fell by 7%, from 4,374 to 4,086, and ads for cashiers and sales clerks dropped by the same share, from 7,888 to 7,369. Drivers were sought in 10,173 ads, 1% more often, and security guards in 1,361, 1% less often. In my view this is the most important number in this edition, because it says more about industry and logistics than the headline figure does.

Benefits and requirements: the bar is going up

The average number of benefits per offer rose to 5.9 from 5.4 in August, and according to the report it is the highest figure of 2026. Training is promised in 45% of ads, still well below a few years ago, when more than 80% of offers included it.

Requirements went up too: the typical offer now lists 5 of them, compared with 4.7 in August. Professional experience is expected by 62% of employers (59% in August), education by 47% (50%), availability by 30% (32%) and a foreign language by 21% (28%). So what is rising above all is the expectation of experience, and that is a requirement people entering the job market by definition do not meet.

My take: industry is still waiting for a recovery

September’s growth in job offers is built on healthcare and office work, and manual work is the only area in the red. It looks like Polish industry is still waiting for a rebound at our largest trading partner. In Germany, the ifo institute says plainly that jobs are still being cut in manufacturing and trade, even though its employment barometer edged up to 95.1 points in September. In early September, Volkswagen’s supervisory board approved cutting another 50,000 jobs by 2030.

Employers are also raising the bar: 62% of offers now require experience. I suspect that with AI taking over simple tasks, the youngest workers will feel this the most. Data from the US points the same way. According to Census Bureau research covered by Fortune, after ChatGPT’s release, graduates of the majors most exposed to AI saw their chance of being employed one quarter after graduation fall by five percentage points, and their initial earnings drop by 13%.

On top of that, borrowing is getting more expensive. Inflation in Poland rose to 4% in September, according to the flash estimate from Statistics Poland (GUS). The European Central Bank raised rates on September 10 by 25 basis points, and the Fed did the same on September 16, lifting its target range to 3.75-4%. Money for growth and new jobs is getting more expensive. Accordingly, I don’t think we can talk about a recovery across the whole market until industry picks up.

Download the report

You can download the full report “Job Offers in Poland. Edition LXXV: September 2026” below, with commentary from Magdalena Marcinowska (Grant Thornton) and from me. The report is in Polish.

Download the report (PDF, in Polish)

The report includes: