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Tulsa jobs grow, but wages and unemployment move the wrong way.
4.6%
Tulsa unemployment rate
vs 4.3% Oklahoma, 4.1% U.S. (July 2026)
1.2%
Tulsa wage growth
vs 3.6% statewide average weekly wage growth
1.4% YoY
Tulsa employment growth
Outpacing Oklahoma County (-0.8%), Cleveland (-0.9%)
-10.6% YoY
Information sector employment
Steeper than national information-sector softness
This Month's Takeaways
Tulsa's job growth is outpacing its wage growth.
Employment rose 1.4% year-over-year even as average weekly wages grew only 1.2% — a divergence that suggests labor supply is growing faster than labor demand is pushing up pay, a sign of softening momentum beneath a headline of modest expansion.
Unemployment gap with the state is widening, not closing.
Tulsa's 4.6% July rate sits 30 basis points above Oklahoma's statewide 4.3% figure, a reversal from earlier in 2026 when the metro's labor market was comparatively tighter. Worth tracking as a signal of whether Tulsa-specific conditions, rather than a statewide trend, are driving the softening.
Healthcare and skilled trades are the bright spots in a mixed picture.
Registered nurse and electrician advertised pay both moved up moderately against metro norms, consistent with statewide data showing healthcare and transportation/warehousing as the state's strongest-growth sectors. These pockets of strength may offer the clearest signal of where local economic activity is concentrating.
Information-sector contraction is a local vulnerability, not a national one.
Tulsa's information employment fell 10.6% over the past year, a steeper decline than the national information-sector softness reported in August payrolls. Commerce leaders evaluating the metro's tech and professional-services footprint should treat this as a local data point worth independent verification.
Local Economic Conditions
Tulsa's unemployment rate climbed to 4.6% in July 2026, outpacing both the state's 4.3% and the national 4.1% rate, even as the metro's labor force expanded and overall employment grew 1.4% year-over-year through March. Wage growth has not kept stride with that expansion — average weekly wages rose just 1.2% annually, among the weakest readings of any tracked Oklahoma county and well below the 3.6% statewide average, while a 10.6% annual contraction in information-sector employment points to a tech-adjacent soft patch within an otherwise growing labor force.
Open Threads in the Data
Rising local unemployment alongside labor-force growth suggests Tulsa is adding workers faster than it's adding wage-supporting demand — a pattern more consistent with a cooling-but-not-contracting economy than a boom, and one that bears on how commerce leaders read the metro's near-term capacity for expansion. Healthcare and skilled-trade pay (registered nurses up moderately, electricians up moderately) are outperforming broad metro wage trends, indicating where private investment and public workforce programs may find the most traction. Current conditions suggest monitoring whether Tulsa's wage lag against the state average narrows or widens over the next two quarters before drawing conclusions about the metro's competitive position for business investment.
