Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Elizabethtown, KY 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
Kentucky manufacturing employment 2,000 jobs below August 2025 level
The Lane Report — Kentucky industry employment trends, September 2026
Local Economic Conditions
MSA unemployment rate moved from 4.9% (Sept 2025) to 4.0% (Dec 2025)
Bureau of Labor Statistics / Kentucky Center for Statistics — Elizabethtown-Fort Knox MSA local area unemployment statistics
Akebono Brake closure affecting 450 employees, announced October 2025
Labor Current (WARN Act Database) — Kentucky WARN notice tracking
Fritz Winter North America closure affecting 230 employees
Labor Current (WARN Act Database) — Kentucky WARN notice tracking
Looking Ahead
Kentucky labor force grew for three consecutive months through August 2026
University of Kentucky Center for Business and Economic Research — Commentary via Mike Clark on labor force trends
Federal Medicaid budget cuts beginning 2027 threaten healthcare employment
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy — Analysis of healthcare sector labor market risk
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