{"schema_version": 1, "id": "columbia-sc-msa/information-technology/2026-10", "product": "Labor Market Pulse", "metro": {"geography_id": 159, "label": "Columbia, SC MSA", "slug": "columbia-sc-msa"}, "focus_area": {"key": "information_technology", "slug": "information-technology", "label": "Information Technology"}, "period": "2026-10", "public_after": "2026-10-01", "frozen_at": "2026-11-03T03:00:40.659021+00:00", "headline": "Columbia's tight labor market is outpacing IT pay adjustments.", "headline_summary": "Columbia unemployment fell to 3.6% and Systems Administrator pay jumped to $93,006, but Cybersecurity Analyst pay held flat at $94,286 even as the national figure climbed to $107,327.", "key_indicators": [{"label": "Columbia metro unemployment", "value": "3.6%", "context": "vs 4.2% national, 3.2% Charleston"}, {"label": "Columbia payroll employment", "value": "440,000", "context": "Record high, +4,400 year-over-year"}, {"label": "Richland County avg weekly wage", "value": "$1,326", "context": "+3.8% YoY, Q1 2026"}, {"label": "Cybersecurity Analyst pay gap", "value": "$13,041", "context": "Metro $94,286 vs national $107,327"}], "takeaways": [{"headline": "Systems Administrator pay is catching up to the national median.", "body": "Metro median jumped to $93,006 with a significant upward move, yet still sits roughly 9% below the national figure. Employers appear to be responding to attrition risk after the fact, in a labor market with sub-4% unemployment."}, {"headline": "Cybersecurity pay is flat locally while national demand accelerates.", "body": "Metro Cybersecurity Analyst pay held at $94,286 against a national median up moderately to $107,327. A widening $13,000 gap risks losing specialized security talent to remote national employers, particularly as 41% of technologists say they'd trade salary for flexibility."}, {"headline": "Data center buildout is reshaping the build-vs-buy decision in real time.", "body": "Meta's $800 million Dorchester-area facility and Google's $3.3 billion program are pulling infrastructure talent and vendor capacity toward hyperscale and managed environments statewide. Columbia IT leaders weighing on-prem expansion should factor in a shrinking contractor and ops-talent bench as regional capacity gets absorbed by larger projects."}, {"headline": "Record local employment masks a shallow technical bench.", "body": "Columbia's 440,000 jobs and 3.6% unemployment reflect public-sector and services strength; IT-specific labor supply remains a separate, tighter picture. Hiring plans built on headline job growth may overstate how easy it is to fill infrastructure, security or cloud roles locally."}], "local_conditions": "Columbia's unemployment rate fell to 3.6% in September, the third-lowest reading among South Carolina metros, with payroll employment up 1,400 jobs month-over-month to a record 440,000 \u2014 a tightening driven in part by the metro's outsized public-sector base (40% above national average) and continued state hiring resilience even as information-sector employment nationally has shed 10,000 jobs since September. Richland County average weekly wages rose 3.8% year-over-year to $1,326, a pace that trails Charleston's double-digit sector gains but still signals upward wage pressure against a local candidate pool shrinking faster than demand for technical skill.", "implications": "Tight local labor supply alongside a $3 billion-plus wave of data center investment across South Carolina (Google, Meta, Valara) is shifting the regional calculus toward cloud and managed-services adoption, since on-prem infrastructure talent is becoming scarcer and costlier to retain in Columbia's smaller labor pool relative to Charleston or national hubs. Systems Administrator advertised pay rose significantly locally (to $93,006) even as it still trails the national median by nearly $9,500, suggesting Columbia employers are closing a retention gap after attrition has already occurred \u2014 current conditions suggest organizations should evaluate whether infrastructure and support roles need faster compensation cycles or deeper investment in managed-service partnerships to offset a shallow local talent bench.", "looking_ahead": [{"category": "Early indicator", "body": "Watch whether Columbia's Systems Administrator pay continues climbing toward the national median or plateaus \u2014 a plateau would suggest employers believe current offers are sufficient to retain, a risky bet given statewide data center hiring competition."}, {"category": "Emerging pressure point", "body": "South Carolina's information sector lost 2,300 jobs over the past year even as data center investment surges, a split worth monitoring for whether displaced talent re-enters the Columbia market or is absorbed by Charleston and Spartanburg projects."}, {"category": "Worth watching", "body": "National tech layoffs have already topped 133,000 for 2026; track whether any mid-size layoffs ripple into Columbia's smaller IT employer base, potentially easing the Systems Administrator and Network Engineer talent crunch."}, {"category": "Potential inflection point", "body": "Cybersecurity Analyst pay has stayed flat locally for several months while national pay rises \u2014 a continued gap through year-end would be a clear signal that Columbia employers need a compensation correction to avoid losing analysts to remote-first national employers."}], "roles": [{"role": "Data Scientist", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 117471.0, "metro_p50": 147959.0, "metro_p75": 164182.5, "metro_trend_direction": "stable", "metro_trend_magnitude": "stable", "national_p50": 145881.0, "national_trend_direction": "stable", "national_trend_magnitude": "stable"}, {"role": "Systems Administrator", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 73510.75, "metro_p50": 93006.4, "metro_p75": 105841.75, "metro_trend_direction": "up", "metro_trend_magnitude": "significant", "national_p50": 102503.0, "national_trend_direction": "up", "national_trend_magnitude": "moderate"}, {"role": "Network Engineer", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 79359.0, "metro_p50": 108355.0, "metro_p75": 113190.75, "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": 122502.5, "metro_p50": 155000.0, "metro_p75": 172500.0, "metro_trend_direction": "stable", "metro_trend_magnitude": "stable", "national_p50": 154403.0, "national_trend_direction": "stable", "national_trend_magnitude": "stable"}, {"role": "Help Desk/IT Support Specialist", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 39794.0, "metro_p50": 49994.0, "metro_p75": 55000.0, "metro_trend_direction": "down", "metro_trend_magnitude": "moderate", "national_p50": 53129.0, "national_trend_direction": "down", "national_trend_magnitude": "moderate"}, {"role": "Cybersecurity Analyst", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 84173.0, "metro_p50": 94286.0, "metro_p75": 109492.0, "metro_trend_direction": "stable", "metro_trend_magnitude": "stable", "national_p50": 107327.0, "national_trend_direction": "up", "national_trend_magnitude": "moderate"}, {"role": "IT Project Manager", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 82069.75, "metro_p50": 112195.6, "metro_p75": 126171.0, "metro_trend_direction": "stable", "metro_trend_magnitude": "stable", "national_p50": 118149.8, "national_trend_direction": "stable", "national_trend_magnitude": "stable"}], "industry_snapshot": [], "citations": [], "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": "columbia-sc-msa/information-technology/2026-10.html", "pdf": "columbia-sc-msa/information-technology/2026-10.pdf"}, "published_at": "2026-11-03T08:20:21.502927+00:00", "report_html_url": "https://reports.wagescape.com/archive/v1/editions/columbia-sc-msa/information-technology/2026-10.html", "report_pdf_url": "https://reports.wagescape.com/archive/v1/editions/columbia-sc-msa/information-technology/2026-10.pdf"}