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Labor Market Pulse
Kingsport-Bristol-Bristol, TN-VA Metro Edition
Focus: IT
Kingsport cybersecurity and network pay fall as national rates climb.
4.0%
Metro unemployment rate
June 2026, up from 3.3% in April-May
3.4%
Tennessee unemployment rate
Steady July-August, below 4.1% national rate
$26.99
Metro avg hourly wage
vs $33.54 national average (May 2025)
$19,117
Cybersecurity Analyst pay gap
Metro $87,673 vs national $106,790
This Month's Takeaways
Metro cybersecurity pay is falling against a rising national tide.
Advertised Cybersecurity Analyst pay in Kingsport-Bristol dropped moderately to $87,673 while the national median climbed to $106,790. That near-$20K gap, against a national backdrop of cybersecurity salaries hitting $400K at the senior end, signals real exposure to remote poaching for any locally based security talent.
Help Desk pay surged while network engineering pay slid.
Advertised Help Desk/IT Support pay rose significantly to $45,000 locally even as Network Engineer pay fell to $95,875. That divergence suggests employers are bidding up entry-tier support roles amid scarcity while treating mid-tier infrastructure roles as more replaceable — worth testing against actual turnover data before assuming the gap reflects true market value.
Metro unemployment uptick may be loosening, not tightening, IT hiring.
June's rise to 4.0% unemployment, against Tennessee's steady 3.4%, runs counter to the statewide narrative of workforce shrinkage. If local IT candidate pools are genuinely growing, build-vs-buy decisions on commodity support functions may tilt toward insourcing sooner than regional trend data alone would suggest.
Software Engineer pay is rising locally while staying flat nationally.
Metro Software Engineer pay moved up to $145,080, approaching the $153,652 national median, even as national software engineer pay held stable. Convergence toward national pay levels for this role, against decline in network and security roles, is consistent with Kingsport employers concentrating retention spending on development talent over infrastructure.
Local Labor Conditions
Kingsport-Bristol's June 2026 unemployment rate climbed to 4.0% from 3.3% in April-May, a sharper uptick than Tennessee's steady statewide 3.4%, suggesting metro-specific softening even as the broader state labor market holds tight. Manufacturing (20.7K jobs) and trade/transportation (24.0K) remain the metro's structural employment base, leaving the region more exposed than Nashville or Knoxville to national IT role compression and slower information-sector hiring reported in August BLS data.
Leadership & Talent Implications
Metro unemployment ticking up while statewide conditions stay tight suggests local IT talent pools may be loosening faster than Tennessee headlines indicate, giving hiring managers modestly more leverage on permanent infrastructure and support hires than six months ago. Falling advertised pay for Network Engineer and Cybersecurity Analyst roles locally, against rising national medians for both, points to a widening gap between what Kingsport employers offer and what specialized talent can command elsewhere — a retention risk for any organization competing with Nashville, Knoxville, or remote-first employers. Consider reviewing network engineering and cybersecurity compensation against national trend lines rather than local averages before the next retention cycle.
