Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 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
Hampton Roads lost 6,000+ federal civilian jobs in 2025
Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance — 2025 regional federal workforce impact analysis
Virginia labor force participation fell to 62.8%, a 10-year low
Virginia Works — August 2026 state labor force data
Local Economic Conditions
Hampton Roads unemployment rose to 4.1% in November 2025
Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance — Regional labor market update
Virginia's August unemployment rate was 3.6%
Virginia Works / Virginia Jobs Day Report — September 23, 2026 state jobs report
Looking Ahead
Virginia projected to lose ~18,050 jobs in 2026
UVA Weldon Cooper Center — August 2026 state employment forecast
National wage growth slowed to 3.0% against 3.4% inflation
Bureau of Labor Statistics — September 2026 national earnings and CPI 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