Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Valdosta, GA 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
National unemployment rate at 4.1% as of August 2026
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National Employment Situation report
This Month's Takeaways
National wage growth slowed to ~3.0% against 3.4% inflation
Bureau of Labor Statistics / BLS Real Earnings — National wage and CPI comparison
Local Economic Conditions
Valdosta MSA unemployment rate was 3.60% in July 2026
Bureau of Labor Statistics (LAUS) — Metro-area unemployment estimate
Jacuzzi closed its Valdosta bathtub factory in May 2026, cutting 100+ jobs
Hoodline — Local news report on factory closure
Open Threads in the Data
Georgia healthcare sector added 19,100 jobs year-over-year
Georgia Department of Labor — State sector employment data
Looking Ahead
Georgia professional/technical services down 11,600 and federal government down 9,400 year-over-year
Georgia Department of Labor — State sector employment trend data
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