Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Ocean City, NJ 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
Ocean City MSA unemployment rate at 4.2% with payroll employment changes
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — BLS regional/metro area employment summary
New Jersey statewide unemployment rose to 5.2% in September 2026
New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development — State labor market data release
This Month's Takeaways
National health care sector added 17,000 jobs in September 2026
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National employment situation report
Local Economic Conditions
Cape May County unemployment rate at 5.5% in August 2026
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED — County-level unemployment data
Looking Ahead
National WARN notices totaled 3,562 filings affecting 313,234 workers as of Sept 26, 2026
LayoffAlert.org — WARN Act notice tracking
National wage growth at 3.0% annually against 3.4% inflation
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National average hourly earnings and CPI data
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