Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: balanced | Confidence: Medium

Boston is a balanced market for Administrative & Office Support over the next 3-6 months. The metro unemployment rate was 3.9% in May 2026, and Massachusetts-level signals for this occupation show employment up 1.2% year over year and active postings up 7.5% year over year in June 2026.[11][12][13] That is better than the broader backdrop, because Massachusetts postings across all occupations were down 3.2% and national admin postings were down 3.5%.[13] But landing a role is still competitive: about 85% of sampled openings are on-site, less than 5% are remote, and about 70% are entry-level, so the easiest roles to find are also the ones that draw the biggest applicant pools.[4][5]

Best positioned: Candidates with recent on-site experience in customer service, Microsoft Office, data entry, scheduling, and calendar management, especially those targeting healthcare, education, hospitality, and larger employers, have the best odds right now.[2][1][7]

Main caution: Do not assume generic remote admin work is plentiful; less than 5% of sampled postings were remote, and BLS says AI-driven productivity gains are expected to dampen long-term labor demand in administrative support fields.[4][14]

What Changed Recently

• Massachusetts-level demand for Administrative & Office Support improved even as broader demand softened: employment was up 1.2% year over year and active postings were up 7.5% year over year in June 2026, while Massachusetts postings across all occupations were down 3.2% and national admin postings were down 3.5%.[12][13]: Boston job seekers are in a category that is holding up better locally than the wider hiring market.
• The Boston metro unemployment rate was 3.9% in May 2026 and was down 4.8780% from a year earlier.[11]: That usually means employers can stay selective, especially for cleaner office-based jobs with lighter training needs.
• Nationally, May 2026 job openings were 7,594 thousand and up 3.8851% year over year, but hires were down 2.9655% and quits were down 6.7539% year over year.[17][18][19]: There are still openings, but actual movement through the labor market is slower, so hiring cycles can feel draggier than the posting count suggests.
• The local posting mix is very in-person: about 85% on-site, about 15% hybrid, and less than 5% remote, with the typical active posting open around 31 days.[4][6]: Candidates who can commute and apply quickly have a structural advantage over people holding out for remote roles.
• A June 2 WARN notice from Jabil Inc. affected 103 employees for layoffs scheduled from September 1 through December 1, 2026 as the company closes its Clinton manufacturing facility and consolidates operations.[23]: This is not an admin-only signal, but it adds some local displacement risk and reminds job seekers that parts of the market remain uneven.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high.

Best target: Aim for on-site coordinator, front-desk, and general office roles in healthcare, education, hospitality, and food-service settings, where local posting volume is more visible and most openings skew entry-level.[2][4][5]

Biggest mistake: Applying only to remote jobs or using a generic resume that says 'organized' without showing office tools and scheduling work.

Next step: Build one resume version around customer service and front-desk work and another around Microsoft Office, data entry, scheduling, and calendar management, then prioritize fresh on-site postings.[1][4][6]

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate.

Best target: Target office manager, executive-support, and senior coordinator roles at larger employers, where complexity is higher but so is the chance of landing salaried work closer to the top of the local range.[7][8][9]

Biggest mistake: Competing on years of experience alone instead of showing scope, ownership, and process improvement.

Next step: Rewrite your resume around calendar ownership, scheduling load, vendor or stakeholder coordination, and measurable office-process wins, then focus on enterprise employers rather than mass-applying to entry postings.[7][1]

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate.

Best target: The cleanest switch is into customer-facing office support because customer service is the top skill in the sample and many listed education requirements sit at the high-school-or-equivalent level rather than requiring a bachelor's degree.[10][1]

Biggest mistake: Assuming your prior customer-facing experience will translate automatically without showing software, scheduling, and documentation skills.

Next step: Translate retail, hospitality, education support, or reception work into office language: scheduling, data accuracy, Microsoft Office, communication, and handling high-volume requests.[2][1]

Salary Reality

stable pay slow advancement

The official local wage anchor is a mean of $28.64/hour for Boston office and administrative support occupations as of May 2025.[20] Newer proxy signals are somewhat higher at the salaried end: recent Boston-area postings center on about $65k to $88k, hourly postings center on about $20 to $25 / hour, Robert Half puts the midpoint for administrative assistants at $61,845/year, and Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows a Massachusetts mean offered salary of ~$54,716 on new openings for this occupation family (n=2,438).[9][28][8][29]

This is a split market. Basic clerical, front-desk, and hourly support work still anchors the lower end, while experienced assistant and office-management roles pull posted salary bands upward.

Boston can pay better than broad national admin benchmarks, but the tradeoff is limited flexibility and slower progression: about 85% of postings are on-site, less than 5% are remote, and only about 5% of sampled openings are senior-level.[4][5]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in experienced administrative-assistant and executive-support style roles rather than generic front-desk work. Robert Half's Boston range for administrative assistants runs from $55,860 at the 25th percentile to $70,158 at the 75th percentile, while broader local posted salaries center on about $65k to $88k because the sample includes office manager and other salaried roles.[8][9]

Caution: Top-end figures mix salary-guide estimates and partial posted-pay samples, so use them as negotiation context, not as a promise that most openings will pay there.[8][9]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is spread across a long tail rather than locked inside a few marquee employers. The local sample shows more than 1,100 postings across more than 500 companies over the last 90 days, and employer concentration is fragmented.[21][25] That helps if you are willing to search widely, but it also means you should not wait for one famous employer to carry your whole search. Industry mix matters more than brand recognition here. Healthcare accounts for about 30% of sampled postings, food & beverage about 20%, hospitality about 10%, hospitals and health care about 10%, and education about 10%.[2] About 50% of postings come from enterprise employers, so many openings sit inside larger organizations with formal screening and narrower job matching.[7] The work itself is mostly operational and in person. About 85% of postings are on-site, about 15% are hybrid, and less than 5% are remote, while the typical active posting has been open around 31 days.[4][6] That favors candidates who can interview quickly, commute reliably, and mirror the stated requirements closely.

• Healthcare office support (high): Healthcare is about 30% of sampled postings, making it the clearest local volume segment for receptionist, coordinator, scheduling, and general office support work.[2]
• Education and campus administration (moderate): Education accounts for about 10% of sampled postings and aligns well with communication, scheduling, and calendar-driven support work.[2][1]
• Hospitality and food-service administration (moderate): Food & beverage is about 20% of the sample and hospitality about 10%, so there is a meaningful pool of operations-heavy admin work tied to customer service and scheduling.[2][1]
• Enterprise support roles (moderate): About 50% of postings come from enterprise employers, which can offer stronger process-driven admin roles but usually with stricter experience matching.[7]

Where to focus: Prioritize on-site healthcare, education, and enterprise coordinator roles that explicitly ask for customer service, Microsoft Office, data entry, scheduling, and calendar management.[2][4][1]

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Customer service (table stakes): It is the single most common skill signal in the local sample at about 25%, which tells you many 'admin' jobs are really service-and-coordination jobs.[1]
• Microsoft Office / Microsoft Office Suite (table stakes): Microsoft Office appears in about 15% of postings and Microsoft Office Suite in about 10%, making basic document, spreadsheet, and email fluency a baseline filter.[1]
• Data entry accuracy (table stakes): Data entry shows up in about 10% of postings and travels well across healthcare, education, and other office settings.[1][2]
• Calendar management (differentiator): Calendar management appears in about 10% of postings and is one of the clearest signs that a role is more than basic clerical coverage.[1]
• Scheduling (differentiator): Scheduling also appears in about 10% of postings and is especially useful in healthcare, hospitality, and education workflows.[1][2]
• Communication and time management (differentiator): Communication and time management each show up in about 10% of postings, but they only help if you prove them through concrete examples such as meeting coordination, deadline ownership, or handling high request volume.[1]
• CPR (differentiator): CPR is the most commonly named formal certification in the local sample, though it appears in less than 5% of postings, so it is a niche advantage rather than a market-wide requirement.[3]
• On-site availability (table stakes): About 85% of sampled postings are on-site and only about 15% are hybrid, so the ability to work in person is effectively part of the screening bar in this market.[4]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Medical records specialist (pivot): This is a reasonable pivot if your strengths are data entry, documentation, and detail-heavy office work, especially because healthcare is the largest nearby demand pool in the local sample.[2][1]
• Accounts payable clerk (pivot): If you already lean on data entry and Microsoft Office, this is a logical move into more process-driven back-office work.[1]
• HR coordinator (pivot): Candidates strong in scheduling, communication, and stakeholder support can often reposition into people-ops work.[1]
• Inventory coordinator (both): This can work well for applicants coming from hospitality or food-service environments who already handle coordination, vendor communication, and time-sensitive workflows.[2][1]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Create two resume versions: one for front-desk and customer-facing office support, and one for coordinator-style work built around Microsoft Office, data entry, scheduling, and calendar management.[1]
• Build a target list centered on healthcare, education, hospitality, food & beverage, and enterprise employers, because that is where the local posting mix is concentrated.[2][7]
• Stop spending most of your search time on remote-only filters; less than 5% of sampled postings were remote and about 85% were on-site.[4]
• Apply earlier in the posting lifecycle and follow up fast, because the typical active posting has been open around 31 days.[6]

Days 31-60

• Add proof to your resume and interviews: calendar volume handled, scheduling load, data-entry accuracy, office software used, and the number of stakeholders or locations you supported.
• If you are targeting healthcare-adjacent or school-based roles, decide whether CPR is worth adding; it is niche but it is the most commonly named certification in the local sample.[3]
• Narrow your search terms away from generic 'administrative assistant' alone and toward sector-specific roles in healthcare, education, and operations-heavy environments.[2]
• If response rates stay weak, test one adjacent track such as HR coordinator, accounts payable clerk, medical records, or inventory coordination instead of repeating the same application strategy.

Days 61-90

• Pick one vertical and commit: healthcare office support, education administration, hospitality operations support, or enterprise executive support.
• Use current pay anchors when negotiating or screening offers: local salaried postings center on about $65k to $88k, while Robert Half's Boston midpoint for administrative assistants is $61,845/year.[9][8]
• If you are still not getting traction, shift toward less-automatable work built around in-person coordination, scheduling, and customer-facing coverage rather than purely generic clerical tasks.[14][1][4]
• Audit your search by work arrangement and commute reality; in this market, being realistically available for on-site work is often more important than widening your title list.[4]

Methodology and Confidence

This June 2026 report was generated on July 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: June 2026. Latest direct Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH data: July 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: Medium. Direct local data anchors the page, but some conclusions still rely on broader category and proxy signals.

Limitations

• The strongest official metro wage anchor for this category is from May 2025, so current pay expectations rely partly on newer salary guidance and posted-pay samples rather than a fresh government metro wage release.[20][8][9]
• Statewide Massachusetts occupation signals were used to sharpen the Boston picture because equivalent metro-level monthly hiring and postings data for this occupation are not published at the same granularity.[12][13]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so direction of demand, leading employer names, and skill patterns are more reliable here than exact totals or market-share percentages.[21][22][4][1]
• Several year-over-year government comparisons used in this report are preliminary and may be revised, including the local unemployment change and national payroll and openings trends.[11][15][17][18][19]
• This category is intentionally narrow, so neighboring work such as payroll, medical records, warehouse clerical work, and HR support should be treated as adjacent paths rather than read back into the core admin market.

References

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8. Robert Half. Staffing, Recruitment & Job Search · 2026-07 · roberthalf.com
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11. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-05 · data.bls.gov
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13. Reveliolabs. Job Openings - Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-06 · reveliolabs.com
14. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Industry and occupational employment projections overview and highlights, 2024–34 : Monthly Labor Review : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2025-08 · bls.gov
15. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
16. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
17. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-05 · data.bls.gov
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19. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-05 · data.bls.gov
20. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Boston-Cambridge-Newton — May 2025 · 2026-06 · bls.gov
21. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-06 · callings.ai
22. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-06 · callings.ai
23. Warntracker. Jabil Inc. (aka Jabil - Clinton JHC) Lays Off 103 Workers — Clinton, MA, MA WARN Notice August 2026 · 2026-06 · warntracker.com
24. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices - Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-06 · reveliolabs.com
25. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-06 · callings.ai
26. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-06 · callings.ai
27. Indeed Hiring Lab. Home - Indeed Hiring Lab · 2026-07 · hiringlab.org
28. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-06 · callings.ai
29. Reveliolabs. Salaries - Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-06 · reveliolabs.com