Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Rochester, NY 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
Monroe County unemployment registered 4.4% in August 2026
New York State Department of Labor — NYS DOL county-level labor statistics release
This Month's Takeaways
Rochester averaged 425 monthly job losses in 2026, lowest since 2020
BLS Area Economic Summary — Metro payroll trend analysis
AI-skill job postings rose from 11% to 33% over six months
Rochester Business Journal — Local workforce development reporting, July 2026
Local Economic Conditions
Rochester nonfarm payrolls declined 0.5% year-over-year through July 2026
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — BLS Area Economic Summary, Rochester MSA
Rochester metro unemployment rate reached 4.2% in August 2026
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — BLS preliminary metro unemployment estimate
Looking Ahead
New York recorded 46 WARN notices affecting 4,694 workers in 90 days
LayoffIQ — State WARN Act notice tracking
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