{"schema_version": 1, "id": "greenville-nc-msa/information-technology/2026-10", "product": "Labor Market Pulse", "metro": {"geography_id": 195, "label": "Greenville, NC MSA", "slug": "greenville-nc-msa"}, "focus_area": {"key": "information_technology", "slug": "information-technology", "label": "Information Technology"}, "period": "2026-10", "public_after": "2026-10-01", "frozen_at": "2026-11-03T03:09:56.755524+00:00", "headline": "Greenville IT pay splits sharply between security and support roles.", "headline_summary": "Metro cybersecurity analyst pay rose to $107,629 and software engineer pay to $151,115, while help desk pay fell to $49,064 \u2014 a divergence wider than the national pattern.", "key_indicators": [{"label": "Pitt County unemployment", "value": "4.3%", "context": "vs. 3.4% statewide, August 2026"}, {"label": "Metro cybersecurity analyst pay", "value": "$107,629", "context": "Up significantly, above $107,327 national"}, {"label": "Metro help desk pay", "value": "$49,064", "context": "Down significantly, below $53,129 national"}, {"label": "National tech layoffs YTD", "value": "133,417", "context": "Already exceeds full-year 2025 total"}], "takeaways": [{"headline": "Systems administrator pay is rising while network engineer pay falls locally.", "body": "Systems administrator advertised pay climbed to $92,931 (significant, up) while network engineer pay fell to $92,837 (moderate, down) \u2014 a reversal of national direction, where network engineer pay rose to $115,757. Local infrastructure hiring appears to be prioritizing operational/cloud-adjacent administration over traditional network roles, a signal worth testing against your own open requisitions."}, {"headline": "Cybersecurity pay strength outpaces the national comparison.", "body": "Metro cybersecurity analyst pay rose to $107,629, a significant increase that now sits above the national median of $107,327. Combined with NC's negative information-sector employment growth, this suggests security roles are being protected or expanded even as adjacent IT functions contract \u2014 a case for prioritizing retention budget there first."}, {"headline": "Help desk pay erosion may be a retention blind spot.", "body": "Metro help desk/IT support pay fell significantly to $49,064, below the already-declining national median of $53,129. With NC automation skills showing a -12 talent gap and 60% of NC tech jobs exposed to AI impact, falling entry-tier pay could accelerate attrition into adjacent roles just as automation reshapes support workloads."}, {"headline": "Software engineer pay growth signals local build capacity is being protected.", "body": "Metro software engineer advertised pay rose significantly to $151,115, nearly matching the national median of $154,403 and outpacing the metro's own historically wider gap to national figures. This narrowing spread is consistent with employers competing harder to retain build-side talent locally, keeping that work in-house with local or remote hires on staff."}], "local_conditions": "Pitt County's unemployment rate held at 4.3% in August 2026, the latest available county reading, even as manufacturing employment approached a 20-year high and the Greenville-Pitt County area added roughly 6,000 net new jobs over the year. Local IT hiring demand is being shaped primarily by national forces working through the local base: AI-driven compensation bifurcation, information-sector hiring pullbacks statewide, and NC's reliance on immigrant software talent amid federal policy uncertainty.", "implications": "Local software engineer and cybersecurity analyst pay posted significant advertised increases this month even as network engineer and help desk pay declined, signaling employers are concentrating compensation dollars on roles tied to security and development instead of spreading raises evenly across IT functions. That divergence complicates headcount planning across infrastructure and support \u2014 flat or falling support-function pay in a market with NC's negative information-sector employment trend raises churn risk in roles leaders may be under-resourcing. Consider reviewing whether current systems administrator and network engineer pay reflects their rising strategic weight in hybrid infrastructure builds, measured against current market demand rather than historical support-tier benchmarks.", "looking_ahead": [{"category": "Emerging pressure point", "body": "Information-sector employment in NC remains negative for 2025 against 8% growth in 2022, and a third of the state's software developers are immigrants. Watch whether federal immigration policy shifts tighten that pipeline further, raising retention stakes for development and infrastructure roles already seeing wage gains."}, {"category": "Worth watching", "body": "Pitt County's 4.3% unemployment rate sits above the statewide 3.4%, with manufacturing near a 20-year local high. Monitor whether manufacturing's technology and automation needs begin pulling systems administration or network talent out of traditional IT departments and into plant operations roles."}, {"category": "Potential inflection point", "body": "National tech layoffs have already exceeded all of 2025, with 133,417 cuts through October 21, alongside 20% growth in data center job postings over three months. A secondary market like Greenville could see laid-off infrastructure talent surface locally \u2014 a potential opening for cost-efficient hiring if local organizations move quickly."}, {"category": "Early indicator", "body": "Help desk and network engineer pay are both softening locally while cybersecurity and software engineering pay rise. If this divergence persists into next month's data, it may indicate employers are reallocating fixed IT labor budgets toward security and development at the expense of frontline support capacity."}], "roles": [{"role": "Data Scientist", "data_scope": "state_rollup", "metro_p25": 107650.0, "metro_p50": 132781.0, "metro_p75": 148500.0, "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": 83982.25, "metro_p50": 92930.8, "metro_p75": 92998.0, "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": 54050.25, "metro_p50": 92837.0, "metro_p75": 109611.5, "metro_trend_direction": "down", "metro_trend_magnitude": "moderate", "national_p50": 115757.0, "national_trend_direction": "up", "national_trend_magnitude": "moderate"}, {"role": "Software Engineer", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 129591.5, "metro_p50": 151115.2, "metro_p75": 161300.0, "metro_trend_direction": "up", "metro_trend_magnitude": "significant", "national_p50": 154403.0, "national_trend_direction": "stable", "national_trend_magnitude": "stable"}, {"role": "Help Desk/IT Support Specialist", "data_scope": "metro", "metro_p25": 40134.75, "metro_p50": 49064.4, "metro_p75": 55151.0, "metro_trend_direction": "down", "metro_trend_magnitude": "significant", "national_p50": 53129.0, "national_trend_direction": "down", "national_trend_magnitude": "moderate"}, {"role": "Cybersecurity Analyst", "data_scope": "state_rollup", "metro_p25": 86895.0, "metro_p50": 107629.4, "metro_p75": 121682.0, "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": 86855.0, "metro_p50": 104569.0, "metro_p75": 120192.0, "metro_trend_direction": "up", "metro_trend_magnitude": "moderate", "national_p50": 118149.8, "national_trend_direction": "stable", "national_trend_magnitude": "stable"}], "industry_snapshot": [], "citations": [{"source_name": "NC Department of Commerce", "source_url": null, "statement": "Pitt County unemployment rate at 4.3% in August 2026"}, {"source_name": "Invest Greenville Labor Report", "source_url": null, "statement": "Greenville-Pitt County area added about 6,000 net new jobs"}, {"source_name": "NC labor market research notes", "source_url": null, "statement": "NC information-sector employment negative for 2025 vs. 8% growth in 2022"}, {"source_name": "NC IT labor market research notes", "source_url": null, "statement": "Immigrants comprise one-third of NC's software development workforce"}, {"source_name": "Tech layoff tracker data", "source_url": null, "statement": "133,417 tech employees laid off at 325 companies through Oct 21, 2026"}, {"source_name": "National IT labor market research notes", "source_url": null, "statement": "Data center job postings grew 20% in three months"}], "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": "greenville-nc-msa/information-technology/2026-10.html", "pdf": "greenville-nc-msa/information-technology/2026-10.pdf"}, "published_at": "2026-11-03T08:22:44.354988+00:00", "report_html_url": "https://reports.wagescape.com/archive/v1/editions/greenville-nc-msa/information-technology/2026-10.html", "report_pdf_url": "https://reports.wagescape.com/archive/v1/editions/greenville-nc-msa/information-technology/2026-10.pdf"}