Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Cedar Rapids, IA MSA · October 2026
Every advertised-pay, job-posting and industry figure in this briefing comes from WageScape's own database of active job postings. The sources below back the external facts cited in the written analysis.
Sources cited in this report
This Month's Takeaways
Iowa trade and transportation sector shed 5,200 jobs over the year
Iowa Workforce Development / Common Sense Institute — Iowa sector-level employment data, 2026
Iowa employed population down 7,500 year over year amid retirement outflows
Iowa Workforce Development — Labor force and employment trend data, August 2026
Local Economic Conditions
Cedar Rapids MSA unemployment rate of 3.7% in July 2026
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Cedar Rapids MSA
NFI Interactive Logistics closing, 49 workers laid off by Sept. 30
Iowa Starting Line — Reporting on Cedar Rapids WARN notice
Rents rising faster in Cedar Rapids/Linn County, linked to data center boom
Iowa Starting Line / Escucha Mi Voz — Local reporting on housing cost pressure
Looking Ahead
Iowa's $2.1 billion UI trust balance enabling lowest 2027 employer tax rates
Iowa Workforce Development — Unemployment insurance trust fund policy update
How the numbers are calculated
- Advertised pay is the median of the pay ranges employers publish in active job postings in this metro. It is not survey or payroll data.
- Percent changes compare the latest six full months with the six months before that, for the same metro and sector.
- Sectors group postings by the employer's industry (NAICS) classification into ten sectors. Where a metro has too few postings in a sector, the state figure is used instead.
- Role pay trends use the same comparison windows. "Stable" means a change of less than 3%; "moderate" 3–10%; "significant" more than 10%.
Official data for comparison