Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · PA 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
Key Indicators
Pennsylvania unemployment rate at 4.1% in September, up from 3.7% in August
PA Department of Labor & Industry — Preliminary September 2026 employment situation report
Local Economic Conditions
Wayne County July 2026 unemployment at 3.6%, Scranton-Wilkes-Barre at 4.7%
PA Center for Workforce Information & Analysis — County-level unemployment data, July 2026 release
PA job growth since Aug 2025 concentrated in health/education and leisure/hospitality
Keystone Research Center — Analysis of PA DLI employment data
Open Threads in the Data
Construction, government, trade/transportation, information sectors lost 13,900 jobs statewide
Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry — Current Employment Statistics, September 2026 release
Looking Ahead
PA House passed H.B. 2189 to raise minimum wage; Senate has not acted
Pennsylvania House of Representatives — Legislative status of minimum wage bill
PA labor force dropouts rose from ~8,000 to over 15,000 between early and Q3 2025
Keystone Research Center / PA DLI — Labor force participation analysis
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