Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Peoria, IL 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
Peoria lost average 100 jobs/month in 2026, 7th-worst nationally
Illinois Department of Employment Security — IDES metro payroll employment trend analysis
Peoria County weekly wage gain of +6.9% led large Illinois counties in Q1 2026
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Q1 2026
National wage growth 3.0% vs 3.4% inflation, weakest since May 2021
Bureau of Labor Statistics — BLS employment situation report, September 2026
Local Economic Conditions
Peoria MSA unemployment rate 4.5% in August 2026, down from 4.7% in July
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics / FRED — BLS local area unemployment statistics for Peoria MSA
Looking Ahead
Illinois labor force contracted from 6,571,000 to 6,477,000, March-August 2026
Moody's Analytics / Illinois CGFA — Illinois labor force and employment commentary
National nonfarm payrolls added 29,000 in September, prior two months revised down 60,000
Bureau of Labor Statistics — BLS 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