Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · Waterloo-Cedar Falls, IA 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
Black Hawk County unemployment rate at 4.6%
Bureau of Labor Statistics (Local Area Unemployment Statistics) — County-level unemployment data
Local Economic Conditions
Waterloo-Cedar Falls civilian labor force fell from 90,300 to 87,200
Bureau of Labor Statistics (Local Area Unemployment Statistics) — Metro labor force series, Sept 2025-Feb 2026
Manufacturing is metro's largest supersector at ~15,775 jobs
Bureau of Labor Statistics (Current Employment Statistics) — Metro industry employment breakdown
Looking Ahead
Iowa unemployment held at 3.2% for fourth consecutive month in August 2026
Iowa Workforce Development — Statewide unemployment rate release
Iowa employers added 2,400 jobs in August, led by 1,300 in manufacturing
Iowa Workforce Development — Statewide monthly employment situation report
Iowa's UI trust balance of $2.1 billion enabling lowest 2027 employer tax rates
Iowa Workforce Development — Unemployment insurance trust fund status
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