Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-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
This Month's Takeaways
NJ unemployment forecast to rise toward 5.2% through 2026-2027
Rutgers University New Jersey State Policy Lab — State unemployment projection
Nearly all NJ job gains concentrated in education/health services, rest of economy down ~24,000
NJ Department of Labor & Workforce Development — 12-month sector employment breakdown through April 2026
National wage growth slowed to 3.0% against 3.4% inflation
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National average hourly earnings and CPI data, September 2026
Local Economic Conditions
Metro employment reached 9,977,000 with 4.3% preliminary unemployment rate
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Northeast Information Office — Metro area employment and unemployment data, July 2026
New Jersey lost 1,700 payroll jobs in August 2026
NJ Department of Labor & Workforce Development — State payroll employment report, August 2026
Looking Ahead
Official September metro data releases October 28, 2026
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment release schedule
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