Brought to you by:
Powered by wagescape.com
Labor Market Pulse
Tulsa, OK Metro Edition
Focus: IT
Tulsa IT pay splits: security climbs as scientists, PMs retreat.
4.6%
Tulsa MSA unemployment rate
Up from 4.0% in April; vs 4.1% national
-10.6% YoY
Tulsa information sector employment
4.2K workers, steepest metro sector decline
1.2% YoY
Tulsa County weekly wage growth
vs 3.2% national wage and salary growth
>33%
Oklahoma firms planning no wage increase
Up from 15% in 2023 (KC Fed survey)
This Month's Takeaways
Metro cybersecurity pay is diverging from a cooling local market.
Cybersecurity Analyst advertised pay rose significantly to a $100,000 metro median even as broader Tulsa employment growth slowed and the information sector shrank 10.6% year-over-year. Demand for security talent appears insulated from the metro's general softening — a signal to protect that line item even amid budget tightening elsewhere.
Data Scientist and IT Project Manager pay are pulling in opposite directions from national trends.
Metro Data Scientist median pay fell significantly to $105,819, well below the $148,250 national figure, while IT Project Manager pay dropped moderately to $108,915 against a rising national median. This gap may reflect fewer large-scale analytics or transformation initiatives locally — worth testing against actual project pipeline before assuming it reflects candidate supply.
Rising unemployment hasn't reached systems administration roles.
Systems Administrator advertised pay rose moderately to $79,656 even as Tulsa's unemployment rate climbed to 4.6%, suggesting infrastructure-support talent remains scarce despite broader labor slack. Organizations leaning on outsourced or contract staffing for commodity IT functions should verify this assumption still holds for core systems roles.
Help desk pay compression may widen the entry-to-mid-tier gap.
Metro Help Desk/IT Support pay declined moderately to $45,641, roughly 15% below the national median of $53,644, while general IT professional pay in Oklahoma averages over $101,000. Entry-level retention economics look increasingly unfavorable compared to lateral hiring at the mid-tier — a dynamic worth factoring into internal promotion versus external hiring decisions.
Local Labor Conditions
Tulsa MSA unemployment climbed to 4.6% in July, outpacing both the Oklahoma (4.3%) and national (4.1%) rates, while the metro's information sector contracted 10.6% over the trailing twelve months — a sharper pullback than the national tech labor picture suggests. Average weekly wage growth in Tulsa County has slowed to 1.2% year-over-year, well below the 3.2% national wage and salary growth reported in the BLS Employment Cost Index, pointing to a metro-level cooling that is more pronounced than state or national trends imply.
Leadership & Talent Implications
Widening labor slack alongside information-sector contraction suggests Tulsa-area IT organizations have more leverage in headcount planning than the national narrative of tight cybersecurity and AI talent markets would indicate — but that leverage is uneven across roles. Metro advertised pay for Cybersecurity Analyst and Systems Administrator positions is rising even as Data Scientist and IT Project Manager pay has fallen significantly, signaling that local demand is bifurcating around infrastructure-security functions rather than lifting broadly. Current conditions suggest reviewing role-level advertised pay trends before assuming metro-wide softness extends to security and systems hiring — flat or declining headcount budgets may still require targeted premiums to hold specialized talent.
