July 2026 labor market report
Social Media skill mentions surged 72% to 407 in July, while Customer Success Manager and Project Manager postings both doubled, and Technology sector jobs climbed 35% to 12,026.
July 2026 labor market report
The 60,000 global job postings tyomarkkinadata tracked this month, distilled for international talent in Finland.
The short version
- Social Media skill mentions jumped 72% MoM to 407, the steepest percentage rise of any high-volume skill this month, overtaking Digital Marketing (+61%) and Salesforce (+63%) as the fastest-moving non-technical signal.
- Customer Success Manager and Project Manager both recorded 100% MoM growth in posting volume, suggesting employers are rebuilding relationship and delivery layers that were thin in H1 2026.
- B2B SaaS now appears in 1,209 postings (+47% MoM), pulling ahead of pure technical skills in raw mention count for the first time in this data series.
- Technology industry postings grew from 8,938 to 12,026 MoM (+35%), absorbing most of the overall volume increase and widening the gap with every other sector.
What changed this month
Rising skills. The headline mover by percentage is a three-way cluster of skills that each recorded exactly 100% MoM growth from a smaller base: SEO (292 mentions), Customer Support (286 mentions), Financial Reporting (266 mentions), and Content Creation (238 mentions). Among high-volume skills, Social Media led with +72% (407 mentions), Salesforce followed at +63% (798 mentions), Digital Marketing at +61% (335 mentions), Project Management at +51% (501 mentions), and Analytics at +44% (403 mentions). B2B SaaS at +47% (1,209 mentions) is the volume leader in percentage-significant territory.
Rising professions. Account Executive posted the largest percentage gain among established roles at +65% (747 postings). Marketing Manager rose +53% (573 postings). Customer Success Manager and Project Manager both doubled from their June bases to 342 and 326 postings respectively. Software Engineer grew a steady +15% to 4,487, its highest count in the data series to date. Recruiter gained +23% to 554.
Declining professions. Marketing (the broad category) slipped -4% to 499 postings. Customer Success (the broad category, distinct from Customer Success Manager) fell -8% to 430. Finance fell -6% to 392. These declines are modest and may reflect reclassification into more specific titles rather than genuine demand reduction.
Declining skills. No skills recorded a net decline this month. This is consistent with June's pattern and likely reflects expanding total posting volume rather than universal demand.
Skills in demand
AI and machine learning
| Skill | Mentions | MoM change |
|---|---|---|
| AI | 1,166 | +16% |
| Machine Learning | 673 | +12% |
Data and analytics
| Skill | Mentions | MoM change |
|---|---|---|
| Data Analysis | 901 | +31% |
| SQL | 630 | +22% |
| Analytics | 403 | +44% |
| Automation | 335 | +31% |
Cloud and infrastructure
| Skill | Mentions | MoM change |
|---|---|---|
| AWS | 863 | +21% |
| Cloud | 629 | +26% |
| Kubernetes | 377 | +19% |
| CI/CD | 256 | +19% |
| DevOps | 319 | +16% |
Software development
| Skill | Mentions | MoM change |
|---|---|---|
| Python | 1,163 | +20% |
| Java | 447 | +18% |
| JavaScript | 309 | +28% |
Business and go-to-market
| Skill | Mentions | MoM change |
|---|---|---|
| B2B SaaS | 1,209 | +47% |
| Salesforce | 798 | +63% |
| Project Management | 501 | +51% |
| Social Media | 407 | +72% |
| Digital Marketing | 335 | +61% |
| Team Leadership | 290 | +46% |
The co-occurrence data reinforces these clusters. The AWS bundle (AWS, Python, Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD) appeared together 1,311 times this month, up from 1,095 in June. The B2B SaaS and Salesforce pair co-occurred 575 times, up from 355. Employers are not just listing more skills; they are listing them together more consistently, which means partial skill coverage carries less weight than it did six months ago.
Professions in demand
| Profession | Postings | MoM change |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | 4,487 | +15% |
| Operations | 1,806 | +7% |
| Sales | 1,491 | +1% |
| Product Manager | 861 | +18% |
| Machine Learning Engineer | 807 | +8% |
| Account Executive | 747 | +65% |
| DevOps Engineer | 726 | +12% |
| Engineering Manager | 656 | +6% |
| Marketing Manager | 573 | +53% |
| Recruiter | 554 | +23% |
| System Administrator | 484 | +21% |
| Data Engineer | 454 | +13% |
| Security Engineer | 401 | +19% |
| Data Scientist | 424 | +8% |
| Customer Success Manager | 342 | +100% |
| Project Manager | 326 | +100% |
Software Engineer at 4,487 postings is more than twice the size of the second-largest category (Operations at 1,806) and nearly three times the third (Sales at 1,491). The gap is widening: in June, Software Engineer was 2.3x Operations; in July it is 2.5x.
Industry and seniority
Industry. Technology dominated at 12,026 postings, up 35% from 8,938 in June. Finance held second place at 950 (up from 664), Media third at 810 (up from 493). Healthcare reached 433 (up from 259) and Consulting 418 (up from 243). All tracked industries grew in absolute terms. The Technology share of categorized postings is roughly 77%, consistent with the composition of the source panels (a16z portfolio companies and YC-affiliated firms skew heavily toward tech).
Y Combinator data provides a useful cross-check: of 5,999 tracked companies, 1,480 are actively hiring (24.7%, up from 1,474 of 5,948 in June). B2B remains the dominant YC vertical with 2,185 active companies and 846 hiring. Fintech (472 companies, 168 hiring) and Healthcare (526 companies, 162 hiring) are second and third.
Seniority. Mid-level roles accounted for 10,087 postings (64.5% of the seniority-tagged total), senior roles for 4,636 (29.6%), interns for 698 (4.5%), and junior roles for 559 (3.6%). The ratio is nearly identical to June's distribution (mid 64.0%, senior 29.6%), suggesting the seniority mix is structural rather than cyclical. Employers in this dataset consistently want people who can contribute immediately with limited onboarding.
What this means for international talent in Finland
The 35% jump in Technology postings within a single month is the largest single-sector move in this data series. Even accounting for the fact that tyomarkkinadata's panels are tech-heavy by construction, a move of this size reflects genuine hiring acceleration, most plausibly driven by the continued productization of AI features across B2B SaaS companies. The B2B SaaS skill tag at 1,209 mentions and +47% MoM is the clearest leading indicator: companies are building, and they need people who understand how to sell and operate software-as-a-service products, not just write code for them. International professionals in Finland who are pivoting from on-premise or services backgrounds should treat B2B SaaS fluency as a credential gap worth closing explicitly on their CV and LinkedIn profile.
The Account Executive role at +65% (747 postings) and Marketing Manager at +53% (573 postings) are the two fastest-growing significant non-engineering titles. Both sit at the commercial layer of the same B2B SaaS stack. Finnish employers in technology sales have historically had a documented preference for native Finnish speakers in customer-facing roles, but global hiring panels reflect a different pattern: Salesforce skills (798 mentions, +63%) and Social Media (407 mentions, +72%) are being requested at scale alongside these titles, and those skills are language-neutral. International talent with documented Salesforce administration or Social Media analytics experience should be applying to Account Executive and Marketing Manager roles in Finland's export-oriented tech companies more aggressively than the roles' language requirements might initially suggest.
The seniority picture carries a practical constraint worth naming: 64.5% of postings target mid-level professionals. Junior and intern slots together represent only 8.1% of the tagged market. For international talent who arrived in Finland recently and are trying to enter the market at a lower level to build local experience, the numbers confirm what many report anecdotally: the formal job market here rewards demonstrated track records over potential. The hidden-job market and direct outreach remain disproportionately important for those at the earlier stages of their Finnish career. Global trends in AI tooling (AI at 1,166 mentions, +16%; Machine Learning at 673, +12%) will likely show up in Finnish job descriptions with a lag of roughly two to three quarters, as domestic employers adopt tooling that international tech companies are already standardizing. Building that AI and data stack now, before Finnish postings demand it explicitly, is the higher-leverage move.
Methodology
tyomarkkinadata samples approximately 60,000 global job postings per month across Stripe, NVIDIA, Salesforce, and 200+ other companies. Numbers in this report come from their four listed sources for the period ending July 2026: a16z portfolio job listings (14,506 postings), Nordic jobs (2,000 postings), remote jobs (44,992 postings), and international job enrichments (16,000 records). Skill and profession mentions are extracted from posting text; the same role can appear under multiple skills, so mention counts across skills will exceed total posting counts. MoM percentage changes compare July 2026 figures against June 2026 figures from the prior month's dataset. Postings with no seniority or industry tag are excluded from those breakdowns only.