Employers in August posted more than 28,000 online job ads for graphic designers, an increase of 15 percent year over year and more than 80 percent over the past four years, according to Wanted Analytics. The number of job ads for graphic designers reached a new four-year high earlier this year, when job availability surged to more than 30,000 ads during April and May.

However, advertising, marketing, and other design services companies experienced an 8 percent decline in hiring from last year as many of these jobs move in-house.

Metropolitan areas with the highest volume of listings for graphic designers included New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C. The New York area had the most available positions at 3,638. However, the San Francisco area posted the greatest growth in demand over the past year with the number job ads rising 17.8 percent in August compared to the same month last year.

The most commonly required skills, tools and technologies in graphic design job ads were Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Creative Suite; graphical user interface design (UI); hypertext markup language (HTML); typography; and website development. The most commonly advertised job titles included graphic designer, graphic artist, production artist, web graphic designer and visual designer.