The most in-demand skills by role, August 2026

How this was measured

Every posting we indexed in August 2026 with a usable description was read once and its terms counted — 30,706 in total. A term is listed for a role when it appears in at least 3% of that role's postings, comes from at least four different employers, and is used more there than across the corpus as a whole. That last column is the ratio: 3.5x means postings in that role name the term three and a half times as often as the average posting does.

Nothing here is drawn from a fixed list of skills. Terms are found by counting what postings say, so a tool that did not exist last year appears as soon as employers start naming it. Words that every posting uses regardless of role are excluded automatically, by measuring them against the whole corpus rather than by maintaining a stopword list.

What this is not

These are the postings we indexed, not the job market. The corpus is drawn from public job boards and company career pages, so it leans toward remote and technology roles, and toward employers who post publicly. Read it as “30,706 postings we measured said this”, never as “30,706 jobs require this”. Roles with too few postings to report are left out entirely rather than shown with a small-sample percentage.

Common questions

What skills are most in demand for Business roles?

Across the 1,026 Business postings we indexed in August 2026, the most frequently named were Project Manager (17.3% of postings), SOPs (9.1% of postings), PMP (8.3% of postings), Coordinator (7.4% of postings), Administrator (7.3% of postings).

What skills are most in demand for Customer Service roles?

Across the 1,221 Customer Service postings we indexed in August 2026, the most frequently named were customer service (41.8% of postings), phone (31.7% of postings), calls (28.3% of postings), Customer Success (27.6% of postings), inquiries (24.0% of postings).

What skills are most in demand for Data roles?

Across the 787 Data postings we indexed in August 2026, the most frequently named were Python (56.9% of postings), SQL (53.1% of postings), analytics (50.3% of postings), models (50.1% of postings), pipelines (42.8% of postings).

What skills are most in demand for Design roles?

Across the 361 Design postings we indexed in August 2026, the most frequently named were portfolio (63.2% of postings), visual (59.8% of postings), creative (56.2% of postings), Figma (47.6% of postings), user (46.3% of postings).

What skills are most in demand for Finance / Legal roles?

Across the 880 Finance / Legal postings we indexed in August 2026, the most frequently named were accounting (54.0% of postings), prepare (32.7% of postings), controls (32.3% of postings), tax (26.0% of postings), transactions (24.2% of postings).

What skills are most in demand for Human Resources roles?

Across the 615 Human Resources postings we indexed in August 2026, the most frequently named were HR (33.7% of postings), administrative (30.4% of postings), Assistant (27.2% of postings), sourcing (25.5% of postings), recruiter (24.6% of postings).

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