Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · OK NONMETROPOLITAN AREA · 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
Love County highest (7.0%) and Dewey County lowest (2.6%) county unemployment, May 2026
Oklahoma Employment Security Commission — County unemployment rate report
Dewey County average weekly wage of $1,478, state's highest
Oklahoma Economic Indicators — County wage data release
WTI crude averaged $83.90 in August with rig count at 51
Oklahoma Energy Today — State energy sector activity tracking
Local Economic Conditions
73 of 74 smaller Oklahoma counties have wages below national average
Bureau of Labor Statistics / Oklahoma Economic Indicators — County-level average weekly wage data
Open Threads in the Data
Over a third of Oklahoma firms do not plan to raise wages in 2026
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City — Regional business survey on wage plans
Looking Ahead
National wage growth of 3.0% trailing 3.4% inflation
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National wage and CPI data, 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