Job Market Signal — September 2026: the same job, a different gap, and what employers offer when ads mention AI

Employers on a Slovak job board offer cooks €1,800 a month. On the French public employment service, employers offer €2,150. That is 84% of the French figure. For accountants, the same comparison gives €1,700 against €2,833: 60%. For nurses, 62%.

Between East and West, the pay gap is not the same for every job. In September, Slovak employers offered cooks, drivers and developers about four fifths of the French figure; accountants, nurses and warehouse workers about three fifths. The second finding comes from company career sites. One ad in seven there now mentions AI, in almost every department, and in the US employers offer more pay when they do.

What employers offer, job by job

Median monthly pay that employers wrote into their September ads, in euros:

Medians of the monthly pay employers stated in their ads, gross where the ad says so, converted at ECB rates of 30 September 2026. † 15 to 29 ads; all other cells 30 or more. – fewer than 15 ads. Sources: Reed, France Travail, profesia.sk, prace.cz, Úřad práce (Czech public employment service).

Most European countries are missing from the table for one reason: most employers there do not state pay in their job ads. Where few do, there are too few ads per job to compare.

The EU pay transparency directive was due in national law by June 2026. In the job ads of most countries, it does not show yet.

The same job, a different gap

What Slovak employers offer as a share of what French employers offer, job by job:

The jobs fall into two groups. For cooks, drivers and developers, Slovak employers offer about four fifths of the French figure. For warehouse workers, nurses and accountants, they offer less than two thirds. On prace.cz, a Czech job board, the split is the same: employers offer cooks and drivers about four fifths of the French figure, and nurses, warehouse workers and accountants about seven tenths. The Czech public employment service is the exception: there, even cooks get only about half the French figure from employers. The ads do not say why.

A single “East against West” pay figure hides this. Between Slovakia and France, the gap for an accountant is more than twice the gap for a cook.

AI has left the IT department

On 6,527 company career sites, one ad in seven mentions AI in the text: AI tools, machine learning, large language models, Copilot. In data and software it is one ad in three, and marketing is close behind, at three in ten. In legal, HR and design it is about one ad in six; in finance, sales, customer support and management, about one in seven.

AI is rarest in healthcare (2.5%), trades (3.6%) and administration (4.8%).

Where employers mention AI, they offer more

In the US, many employers show the pay range on their career sites. For engineering jobs advertised in August and September, employers offered a median of $151,700 a year when the ad mentioned AI, and $100,000 when it did not. In data and analytics it is $108,100 against $76,000, in sales $111,400 against $85,000. These are the three job groups with the most AI ads; in smaller groups the result varies, and in marketing (25 AI ads) employers offer less when they mention AI.

Part of this gap comes from the level of the job and from which employers mention AI at all. Where the ad states a level, the gap is smaller but still there: for senior engineers, employers offer $163,900 when the ad mentions AI and $143,700 when it does not (+14%); for lead engineers, $180,300 against $147,600 (+22%, from only 26 AI ads). Within the same company, employers offer about 10% more in engineering ads that mention AI, but only 14 companies have three or more ads of each kind, too few for a firm result.

We also looked for signs that AI is emptying job groups. We found none in September, but one month of data cannot show such a change. We will keep counting.

What this means for a job search

• If you are looking abroad, compare what employers offer for your own job, not the national average. The gap between two countries can be more than twice as large for one job as for another.
• If your work touches AI, say so. In US engineering, employers offer more when the ad mentions AI, also at the same level.
• In healthcare, trades and administration, employers still rarely mention AI in their ads. Your experience counts more than any tool.

Methodology: every figure comes from Kitsuno’s production crawl (614,825 unique postings from 55 sources in September 2026), counting only ads found by our market crawl. Pay: the median of the monthly pay employers wrote into September ads on five boards in four countries, for six common jobs matched by words in the job title; we removed titles that only look like the job (business developers, CNC programmers, nursery staff, forklift drivers, kitchen helpers, “chef de projet” and similar), apprentices and interns, and we show a cell only with at least 15 ads. Yearly figures are divided by 12, hourly figures are left out, and euros come from ECB reference rates of 30 September 2026. This is the pay employers offer, not what people earn, and a job title can mean a slightly different job in each country. AI: September ads on 6,527 company career sites, the first 4,000 characters of the text, mentions of AI, machine learning, large language models or named AI tools; job aggregators and 363 employers with an AI line in 90% or more of their ads (in a month with at least 10 ads) are left out; healthcare includes a large batch of US hospital career sites added in late August. US pay: 6,913 August and September career-site ads with a yearly pay figure, from 520 employers; the job level comes from our seniority field, which about one ad in four has; same-company figures use companies with at least three ads with AI and three without.

For how the pipeline works, read How we measure job-market signal. For the live numbers, visit Market Pulse.