The State of Iraq's Job Market in 2025

Iraq’s formal job market is more active than most external observers realise. After indexing over 128,000 listings across the country’s 18 provinces, here is what the data shows.

Which sectors are hiring

Technology roles have grown fastest — up roughly 40% year-on-year in Baghdad and Erbil. Engineering (civil, electrical, mechanical) remains the single largest volume category, driven by infrastructure investment in Basra and Mosul. Accounting and finance postings are concentrated in Baghdad, while healthcare roles are distributed across all 18 provinces.

The breakdown by volume, roughly:

Sector	Share of listings
Engineering	28%
Technology	19%
Finance & Accounting	14%
Healthcare	11%
Sales & Marketing	10%
Other	18%

Salary signals

Median advertised salaries in the technology sector are approximately IQD 1.2 million/month in Baghdad, rising to IQD 1.5 million for roles requiring English proficiency and 3+ years of experience. Roles in Erbil’s technology sector pay roughly 8–12% higher than Baghdad equivalents, reflecting the smaller talent pool.

Here is a quick Python snippet to reproduce the salary analysis from our dataset export:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("iraq_jobs_2025.csv")

# median salary by sector and city, filtering out unpublished salaries
salary = (
    df[df["salary_iqd"].notna()]
    .groupby(["sector", "city"])["salary_iqd"]
    .median()
    .unstack("city")
)
print(salary[["Baghdad", "Erbil", "Basra"]].round(-4))

What this means for employers

Competition for mid-level technical talent is real and growing. Employers who advertise specific salaries receive 2.4× more qualified applications than those who do not. Job posts with English-language descriptions attract 35% more applications from university graduates.

The three highest-demand skills across all sectors:

1. Microsoft Excel / Power BI
2. Arabic–English bilingualism
3. AutoCAD (driven by engineering volume)

What’s next

We update the dataset monthly. In the next analysis we will look at employer concentration — how many of the 128,000+ listings come from the top 100 employers, and what that means for market power.

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Data sourced from Jobs by Nabu. Methodology available on request — email [email protected].