{"schema_version": 1, "id": "bloomington-normal-il-msa/information-technology/2026-10", "product": "Labor Market Pulse", "metro": {"geography_id": 152, "label": "Bloomington-Normal, IL MSA", "slug": "bloomington-normal-il-msa"}, "focus_area": {"key": "information_technology", "slug": "information-technology", "label": "Information Technology"}, "period": "2026-10", "public_after": "2026-10-01", "frozen_at": "2026-11-03T03:00:12.318302+00:00", "headline": "Bloomington-Normal IT pay climbs while hiring stays frozen.", "headline_summary": "McLean County unemployment held at 3.4% even as wages rose 6.2% year-over-year, with Cybersecurity Analyst pay ($112,100) now outpacing the national median.", "key_indicators": [{"label": "McLean County unemployment rate", "value": "3.4%", "context": "vs 4.1% national, 4.6% Illinois"}, {"label": "Metro average weekly wage growth", "value": "6.2% YoY", "context": "vs 2.5% Illinois statewide wage growth"}, {"label": "McLean County nonfarm job growth", "value": "+125 jobs", "context": "Over-the-year through July 2026, 25,100 total"}, {"label": "National tech layoffs, YTD", "value": "133,417 workers", "context": "Already exceeds full-year 2025 total"}], "takeaways": [{"headline": "Local pay is outrunning local job growth.", "body": "McLean County wages rose 6.2% year-over-year against only +125 net nonfarm jobs through July, consistent with employers raising pay to hold onto existing staff while new-hire competition stayed muted. This pattern favors retention-focused budget allocation over expanded recruiting spend for infrastructure and support roles."}, {"headline": "Cybersecurity and project management pay gains look structural.", "body": "Metro Cybersecurity Analyst pay ($112,100) and IT Project Manager pay ($99,777) both show significant upward movement, outpacing most other local IT roles and even exceeding national medians in the Analyst case. Advertised rates at or above national levels in a smaller metro may signal lasting scarcity over a temporary spike, warranting more frequent benchmarking of these two titles specifically."}, {"headline": "Low layoffs and low hiring are colluding against headcount plans.", "body": "Illinois Department of Employment Security notes McLean County shows both low layoff and low hiring rates simultaneously, an unusual pairing that suggests employer caution over confidence. IT leaders planning headcount expansion into 2027 should expect longer time-to-fill windows even where budget is approved."}, {"headline": "Network Engineer pay lags the national gap by a wide margin.", "body": "Metro Network Engineer pay sits at $89,568 against a $115,757 national median, a $26,000 gap larger than most other tracked IT roles. Combined with up/moderate movement locally, this may reflect real undersupply in infrastructure-adjacent skill sets over reduced demand, a case for reviewing whether local pay is sufficient to retain networking talent against remote-eligible national offers."}], "local_conditions": "McLean County's 3.4% unemployment rate sits well below both the Illinois (4.6%) and national (4.1%) rates, reflecting a labor market anchored by State Farm and Illinois State University that leaves little slack for IT employers to absorb. Average weekly wages in the metro rose 6.2% year-over-year even as nonfarm job growth stayed nearly flat (+125 jobs through July), a combination consistent with employers paying more to retain workers as headcount stayed flat.", "implications": "Tight local labor supply paired with flat job growth suggests Bloomington-Normal IT employers are competing for a static or shrinking pool of infrastructure, security, and support talent and drawing less from fresh entrants, raising the cost and risk of any plan built around local hiring alone. Significant advertised pay gains for Cybersecurity Analyst and IT Project Manager roles locally point to employers prioritizing risk and delivery-management capacity over headcount expansion, a pattern that should inform where scarce budget gets allocated. Consider reviewing whether security and project-management roles currently filled through local job ads (a signal of hiring demand, where one ad often covers several openings) could be partially met through remote or distributed talent pools, given national data showing 41% of technologists would trade salary for location flexibility.", "looking_ahead": [{"category": "Worth watching", "body": "McLean County's unemployment rate has ticked down three straight months (3.3% to 3.4%), tightening further against a state rate still above 4.5%. Watch whether this spread widens enough to push IT compensation decisions ahead of the normal annual review cycle."}, {"category": "Emerging pressure point", "body": "National data show data center job postings up 20% in three months and 147% above June 2024 levels, a trend concentrated in secondary markets with available power and land. Bloomington-Normal's manufacturing and logistics base could make it a candidate for this buildout, which would reshape local demand for infrastructure and on-prem talent."}, {"category": "Early indicator", "body": "Tech sector layoffs nationally have already exceeded all of 2025 (133,417 through October 21), concentrated in large tech hubs over secondary metros. Monitor whether any of this displaced talent surfaces in the local candidate pool, particularly for cloud and AI-adjacent roles the metro has historically struggled to attract."}, {"category": "Potential inflection point", "body": "Illinois Information sector jobs carry the state's highest average weekly wage ($2,057), yet state information-sector hiring has slowed broadly. Local IT leaders should watch whether State Farm's technology hiring plans shift, given its outsized influence on metro IT labor supply and wage benchmarks."}], "roles": [{"role": "Data Scientist", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 130625.0, "metro_p50": 140593.4, "metro_p75": 162985.0, "metro_trend_direction": "up", "metro_trend_magnitude": "moderate", "national_p50": 145881.0, "national_trend_direction": "stable", "national_trend_magnitude": "stable"}, {"role": "Systems Administrator", "data_scope": "state_rollup", "metro_p25": 79564.25, "metro_p50": 93859.0, "metro_p75": 105000.0, "metro_trend_direction": "up", "metro_trend_magnitude": "moderate", "national_p50": 102503.0, "national_trend_direction": "up", "national_trend_magnitude": "moderate"}, {"role": "Network Engineer", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 89568.0, "metro_p50": 89568.0, "metro_p75": 92415.25, "metro_trend_direction": "up", "metro_trend_magnitude": "moderate", "national_p50": 115757.0, "national_trend_direction": "up", "national_trend_magnitude": "moderate"}, {"role": "Software Engineer", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 110625.0, "metro_p50": 125000.0, "metro_p75": 135000.0, "metro_trend_direction": "up", "metro_trend_magnitude": "moderate", "national_p50": 154403.0, "national_trend_direction": "stable", "national_trend_magnitude": "stable"}, {"role": "Help Desk/IT Support Specialist", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 42969.0, "metro_p50": 58240.0, "metro_p75": 60062.0, "metro_trend_direction": "stable", "metro_trend_magnitude": "stable", "national_p50": 53129.0, "national_trend_direction": "down", "national_trend_magnitude": "moderate"}, {"role": "Cybersecurity Analyst", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 99802.25, "metro_p50": 112100.0, "metro_p75": 112100.0, "metro_trend_direction": "up", "metro_trend_magnitude": "significant", "national_p50": 107327.0, "national_trend_direction": "up", "national_trend_magnitude": "moderate"}, {"role": "IT Project Manager", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 84743.5, "metro_p50": 99777.4, "metro_p75": 104929.5, "metro_trend_direction": "up", "metro_trend_magnitude": "significant", "national_p50": 118149.8, "national_trend_direction": "stable", "national_trend_magnitude": "stable"}], "industry_snapshot": [], "citations": [{"source_name": "WGLT", "source_url": null, "statement": "McLean County unemployment rate of 3.4% as of October 2026"}, {"source_name": "Illinois Department of Employment Security", "source_url": null, "statement": "McLean County average weekly wages up 6.2% year-over-year"}, {"source_name": "Illinois Department of Employment Security", "source_url": null, "statement": "McLean County shows simultaneous low layoff and low hiring rates"}, {"source_name": "Indeed Hiring Lab", "source_url": null, "statement": "Data center job postings up 20% in three months, 147% above June 2024"}, {"source_name": "Layoffs tracking aggregate", "source_url": null, "statement": "133,417 tech layoffs nationally through October 21, 2026"}, {"source_name": "Industry survey data", "source_url": null, "statement": "41% of technologists would trade salary for remote flexibility"}], "methodology": "Advertised pay from active employer job postings, not survey data. WageScape's median is calibrated to correct for spurious low-value postings: distribution analysis shows roughly the lowest 10% of raw values are erroneous entries, so the reported median is the 60th percentile of raw advertised pay.", "edition_label": "November 2026", "files": {"html": "bloomington-normal-il-msa/information-technology/2026-10.html", "pdf": "bloomington-normal-il-msa/information-technology/2026-10.pdf"}, "published_at": "2026-11-03T08:18:56.753597+00:00", "report_html_url": "https://reports.wagescape.com/archive/v1/editions/bloomington-normal-il-msa/information-technology/2026-10.html", "report_pdf_url": "https://reports.wagescape.com/archive/v1/editions/bloomington-normal-il-msa/information-technology/2026-10.pdf"}