Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN 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
Tennessee skilled-trades scarcity index reads 76/100, wage growth 7-9% YoY
WIL Institute Observatory — Skilled-trades scarcity index, Q2 2026
Davidson County wages up 6.6% year over year, largest gain among major TN counties
Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development — County-level average weekly wage data, Q1 2026
Local Economic Conditions
Nashville MSA unemployment rate rose to 3.1% in August from 3.0% in July
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Local area unemployment statistics, Nashville MSA, August 2026
Nashville metro added over 28,000 jobs over the past twelve months
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Metro area employment statistics, August 2026
Looking Ahead
TikTok USDS JV Nashville office closing Oct. 5, affecting 250 workers
Tennessee WARN Act notices — State WARN filing, Davidson County, 2026
U.S. added just 29,000 nonfarm jobs in September with prior months revised down
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National employment situation report, September 2026
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