Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA 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
Key Indicators
County-level unemployment: Dauphin 3.9%, Cumberland 3.1%, Perry 3.4%
PA Department of Labor & Industry — County unemployment statistics, September 2026
National wage growth of 3.0% against 3.4% inflation, lowest since May 2021
Bureau of Labor Statistics / Indeed Hiring Lab — Average hourly earnings and CPI comparison
Local Economic Conditions
Harrisburg-Carlisle MSA unemployment rate at 3.6% in August 2026
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (preliminary MSA data) — Metro-level unemployment and employment figures
National September payrolls added 29,000 jobs with downward revisions
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National nonfarm payroll employment report
Looking Ahead
Pennsylvania recorded 174 WARN filings over 24 months affecting 27,932 workers
PA Department of Labor & Industry WARN Registry — WARN Act notice tracking, statewide
PA labor force dropouts rose from ~8,000 to over 15,000 by Q3 2025
Keystone Research Center — Labor force participation analysis
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