Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · State College, PA 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
PA Health/Education and Leisure/Hospitality added 36,000 jobs since Aug 2025
Keystone Research Center — Analysis of PA Dept of Labor & Industry data
National average hourly earnings grew 3.0% vs 3.4% inflation
Bureau of Labor Statistics — September 2026 earnings and CPI data
Local Economic Conditions
Centre County unemployment rate at 3.0%, PA at 4.1%
Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry — Preliminary county/state employment situation data
National nonfarm payrolls added 29,000 jobs in September 2026
Bureau of Labor Statistics — Employment situation report, September 2026
Looking Ahead
PA labor force dropouts rose from ~8,000 to over 15,000 through Q3 2025
Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry — Labor force participation analysis
Pennsylvania recorded 17 WARN notices affecting ~1,899 workers in past 90 days
LayoffIQ — September 2026 WARN 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