Methodology

Live job postings on WeekdayDoc — about 145,000 at any time, collected from 50+ applicant-tracking systems and job boards, checked daily for liveness. Postings, not a survey.

The number of postings WeekdayDoc collects changes with its own coverage (new sources, feeds that scale up). In August 2026 new postings doubled for that reason. Every demand measure is therefore a share, a ratio or a matched comparison inside a fixed panel.

For each monthly issue, only sources that posted in every month of the four-month window (the issue month and the three before it) count toward shares. Each source is weighted equally, capped at 200 openings, so one feed quadrupling cannot move the whole mix.

Shares count distinct openings — employer + title stem + state — rather than rows, so an employer posting one role across 200 locations counts once per location, and duplicate listings count once.

The specialty's share of the profession's openings this month minus its average share over the prior three months, in percentage points.

Median lifespan of postings that opened 60–150 days before the issue month and have since been removed by the employer. Postings still open are excluded, so the figure is a floor for the slowest specialties. Needs 25+ closed postings.

Share of the month's postings in the panel whose text states a sign-on bonus. Many postings state a bonus without an amount, so no bonus sizes are reported here.

Job views per live posting in the issue month, divided by the profession average. This measures WeekdayDoc's audience, which skews toward some specialties (psychiatry in particular), so it is always labelled "on WeekdayDoc" and only mentioned when clearly above 1.5× or below 0.6×.

For roles re-posted by the same employer with the same specialty and title stem at least 60 days apart, the change in advertised maximum. Each employer gets one vote (its median), so templated re-posts do not dominate. Reported when 8+ employers qualify; not part of the tightness score.

The average z-score across ranked specialties of: share change, seeker interest (inverted), days to close and sign-on prevalence. Higher = tighter market for employers. A specialty needs 60+ postings from 12+ employers in the month to be ranked.

The current month is marked preliminary and recomputed weekly. Once the month ends it is computed a final time and frozen; later changes to WeekdayDoc's specialty classification never rewrite a published issue.

It does not measure total market demand, vacancies per clinician or salaries actually paid. Specialty labels follow WeekdayDoc's classification of posting titles. Months before July 2026 are not indexed because the panel is too small.