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Labor Market Pulse
Texarkana, TX-Texarkana, AR Metro Edition
Focus: IT
Texarkana IT pay splits: support rises, infrastructure softens.
4.70%
Metro unemployment rate
Up from 4.40% a year earlier
62,500
Metro labor force
Essentially flat year-over-year
3.9% YoY
Texas statewide wage growth
Ahead of 3.3% national pace (Dallas Fed)
10,843
Texas software developer openings
Statewide, September 2026 (TWC)
This Month's Takeaways
Help desk pay is rising fast while network engineering cools.
Metro Help Desk/IT Support median climbed significantly to $54,674 while Network Engineer pay fell moderately to $104,894, a divergence not mirrored nationally. This may signal local employers prioritizing frontline support capacity over infrastructure depth, worth confirming before setting next year's infrastructure headcount budget.
Systems Administrator pay is outpacing the national trend locally.
Metro Systems Administrator median rose significantly to $98,853, nearly closing the gap with the national figure of $101,168. Combined with national data showing permanent demand compression in traditional operations roles, this suggests Texarkana employers may be paying up to retain admins doing broader, less specialized work than larger metros require.
Cybersecurity pay gap with peer Texas metros remains wide.
Metro Cybersecurity Analyst median of $103,212 sits well below Dallas-area leadership compensation reaching $170K-$230K for experienced security talent statewide. Local organizations needing senior security expertise should expect to recruit outside the metro or pay a substantial premium to retain anyone they develop internally.
A thin local labor force limits the upside of statewide job growth.
Texas added 159,400 jobs over the year and Austin alone gained roughly 8,300 tech jobs, but Texarkana's labor force of 62,500 is barely moving and unemployment ticked up slightly. Statewide tech momentum is unlikely to translate into a deeper local candidate pool, reinforcing reliance on remote and contract staffing for specialized roles.
Local Labor Conditions
Texarkana's unemployment rate edged up to 4.70% in the most recent reading from 4.40% a year earlier, even as the metro's small, health-care-anchored labor force of roughly 62,500 workers remains structurally tight and slow-growing. Statewide manufacturing and transportation layoffs tracked through Texas WARN filings have not materialized locally, leaving employers to compete for a largely fixed pool of technical talent rather than absorb displaced workers from other sectors.
Leadership & Talent Implications
Texarkana's thin labor pool means IT leaders cannot rely on local displacement or inbound migration to ease hiring pressure the way Dallas or Houston employers might — advertised pay for Help Desk/IT Support jumped significantly even as Network Engineer pay softened, suggesting demand is consolidating around entry-tier support and away from mid-tier infrastructure roles. Build-vs-buy decisions should account for this imbalance: commodity support capacity appears gettable locally at rising but still-affordable rates, while specialized infrastructure and security talent likely requires regional sourcing or contract augmentation. Consider evaluating whether network engineering and systems administration functions are better served by regional remote hires or managed service arrangements than by continued local-only recruiting.
