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The Employment Agency's 2026 labor demand survey outlines a gradual cooling of the labor market. The sharpest contraction in demand is in construction and among specialists with vocational qualifications, while worker shortages in healthcare and education persist. Behind the overall decline, however, lie divergent trends by region and enterprise size. The obstacles to hiring are also shifting – employers are increasingly citing a lack of applicants rather than a skill mismatch. For now, the cooling is most evident in hiring intentions, but if sustained, it could slow down employment and wage growth.

Access to medical specialists is one of the key indicators of the state of regional healthcare systems. Therefore, it is included every year in the IME study 'Regional Profiles: Indicators of Development, the new edition of which we will present very soon. This year, we present access through the indicator 'population per set of medical specialists.' A 'set' refers to a group containing one of each of the 17 types of medical specialists in the district—meaning one cardiologist, one obstetrician-gynecologist, one surgeon, and so on. In practice, the number of sets in each district is determined by the number of the rarest (least numerous) specialists, which are typically infectious disease specialists. The reason for choosing this approach, instead of comparing the population against all specialists, is as follows: if only the total number of specialists is looked at, a district with many cardiologists, for example, but almost no infectious disease specialists, might look good on paper, but actual access to healthcare services would not be good

The erosion of municipal financial autonomy in the country is a long-standing and persistent process. While the share of own-source revenue within total municipal budget receipts stood at approximately 42% in 2015, it is 25.3% in 2025. The downward trend is persistent, despite occasional years of slight increases—such as 2025. The reason is well known: municipal expenditures are rising much faster than revenues, which are tied to relatively static tax bases like property valuations or vehicle engine power. Nevertheless, 2025 does appear to mark a departure from this trend, given that expenditures are growing by 10.9% year-on-year, while revenues are rising by 17.3%. In previous years, expenditure growth was much more rapid—with the exception of 2021, when both revenues and expenditures increased by just under 20%.

The peak of the summer season brings with it the largest concentration of seasonal workers from non-EU countries in the Bulgarian economy. In recent years, there has also been a fierce debate about their role and added value; however, this debate often lacks data. After examining, in a previous publication, the overall dynamics and distribution of migrant workers, in this one we focus in more detail specifically on seasonal workers holding work permits of up to 90 days in Bulgaria.

The euphoria surrounding the hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest has drawn attention to the short-term tourist rental market, mainly due to examples of absurdly high prices. Beyond this mildly comic opportunism, however, this segment of the tourism industry is becoming increasingly popular in Bulgaria and is especially favored by foreign tourists. We know this from the experimental European statistics on nights spent through platforms of the so-called sharing economy.[1] In this case, it concerns four leading platforms — Airbnb, Booking, Expedia, and Tripadvisor — which in 2020 agreed to share their data with Eurostat in order to track the development of the short-term tourist rental market.

The condition of roads is one of the most visible indicators of the quality of public investment. Data from the Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) show a very uneven quality of infrastructure: highways and first-class roads remain the focus of maintenance, but even there are significant shares with severe damage, while in a number of areas – especially in Northern Bulgaria – the poor condition of the pavements is already a systemic problem. Against the background of significant public expenditure on maintenance, the results raise the question not only of how much the state spends on roads, but also of what effect these funds achieve.

In this year's Bulgarian Language and Literature (BEL) final exam, the highest average scores were again in the capital and Smolyan district – the only ones above “Very good 4.50”. The average scores by schools, municipalities and districts are not so indicative, since the exams cannot be compared over the years. However, the threshold of three shows how many students cannot pass the absolute minimum of knowledge and basic literacy. In 2026, it was an average of 11% in the country. The districts with the highest average score – Smolyan and the capital – also have the lowest share of students with “Weak 2” – 5% each. At the other end of this ranking, however, are the worrying results. In four districts, the share of “Weak 2” grades is 19-20% – Shumen, Razgrad, Pazardzhik and Haskovo. This means that every fifth student in these districts has a two in Bulgarian language and literature. These data also show a serious deterioration compared to last year, when so many poor grades were only found in Shumen and Razgrad, with the same average share for the country.