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

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: High

Boston is still a workable market for Administrative & Office Support, but it is not an easy one. The metro unemployment rate was 4.1% in August 2026, total metro nonfarm employment was up +0.5% year over year, and Massachusetts administrative and office-support employment was up 1.4% year over year with state postings up 4.4% year over year in September 2026.[39][40][7][8] The challenge is that most openings are in-person, hiring is spread across many employers rather than one dominant company, and some corporate-office demand looks softer than the broader market.[17][16][12]

Best positioned: Candidates with recent in-person admin experience, strong Microsoft Office and Excel skills, proven calendar ownership, and comfort working in hospital, education, or large-enterprise settings have the best odds right now.[24][36][13]

Main caution: Do not assume Boston's higher pay means abundant remote flexibility or easy upward mobility: less than 5% of sampled roles were remote, and national projections still show little change or decline for many routine clerical paths.[12][41][42]

What Changed Recently

• The local labor market tightened modestly: Boston-Cambridge-Newton unemployment was 4.1% in August 2026, and the unemployment level was down -8.1117% year over year.[2][3]: That supports continued replacement hiring, but it does not remove competition for generalist office roles.
• Massachusetts administrative and office-support employment was up 1.4% year over year in September 2026, and active postings for the occupation were up 4.4% year over year.[7][8]: Statewide direction is better than the national picture for this occupation, which gives Boston job seekers a better local backdrop than a national search alone would suggest.
• Boston metro Professional and Business Services employment was 502 thousand in August 2026 and down -0.9667% year over year.[17]: That is a caution flag for candidates targeting corporate assistant, legal-office, consulting, and back-office roles tied to white-collar office employers.
• The market has become more in-person: about 85% of local administrative postings were on-site, about 15% hybrid, and less than 5% remote, while 84% of Boston postings overall were fully on-site in the first half of 2026.[12][18]: Search strategy matters more now than before; candidates limiting themselves to remote roles will cut themselves off from most of the market.
• National inflation was 3.3530% in August 2026, average hourly earnings were up +3.0% year over year in September 2026, and the federal funds rate was 3.75% in September 2026.[21][22][23]: Employers still face cost pressure, so pay can rise for specialized admin talent, but broad-based entry pay is less likely to jump quickly.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high. About 60% of sampled roles sit at entry level, but most are on-site and still expect real fluency in Microsoft Office, customer service, data entry, and calendar basics before hire.[25][12][13]

Best target: Target receptionist, front-desk, admin coordinator, and general office roles in hospitals, healthcare systems, schools, and larger multi-site employers.[24][11][36]

Biggest mistake: Applying only to remote jobs or sending the same generic resume to every opening.

Next step: Build a proof-based resume that shows scheduling volume, phone or customer flow handled, document prep, and accuracy metrics, then apply by commute radius rather than by title alone.

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Competitive, but better than entry level if you can show executive support, meeting logistics, stakeholder coordination, and process ownership.

Best target: Aim for executive assistant, office manager, and senior coordinator work inside enterprise employers and health systems, where pay tends to be stronger than generic hourly office work.[24][29][34][35]

Biggest mistake: Leading with years of experience instead of business outcomes such as calendars managed, leaders supported, travel complexity, vendor coordination, or office systems improved.

Next step: Repackage your background into an operations-support story with executive calendaring, reporting, event support, and workflow cleanup as headline achievements.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate if you are coming from retail, hospitality, or customer-facing service work, because those industries already show up in the local employer mix and reward service discipline.[11][13]

Best target: Look for front-office and admin-coordinator roles first, not top-end executive-assistant openings.

Biggest mistake: Trying to jump straight into the highest-paying executive track without proving office software, calendar handling, and written communication.

Next step: Translate service work into office language: appointment setting, conflict handling, cash or record accuracy, shift coordination, and customer communication.

Salary Reality

stable pay slow advancement

Observed local government pay for the broad office and administrative support group was $28.64 per hour in May 2025, with an annual median of $56,580, a 25th percentile of $46,940, and a 75th percentile of $67,970 in the Boston metro.[1][26][27][28] Directional market signals are mixed around that anchor: local posted salary ranges center on about $70k to $88k, hourly-paid postings center on about $20 to $25 / hour, and Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows a Massachusetts mean offered salary of about $55,305 on new openings in September 2026 (n=1,209).[29][30][31]

Boston pays above the national broad-group median of $47,450, but the local cost base is high and metro home prices were up +2.1% year over year as of July 2026.[32][33]

The upside is real, but it is concentrated in senior-scope or enterprise roles, while entry openings still dominate the mix and most jobs require on-site attendance.[24][12][25]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in executive-assistant and senior coordinator work inside larger employers; nationally, executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants had a median annual wage of $79,140 in May 2025, and local senior-scope administrative assistant comparisons run $65,140–$79,050.[34][35]

Caution: Do not overread top-end salary figures. The Boston BLS release does not publish detailed local wages for executive assistants, office managers, or receptionists in that release, and the higher posted ranges can be skewed toward specialized or manager-level openings.[1][29]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Opportunity is spread across a long tail of employers, not a few dominant brands. Over the last 90 days, the local sample showed more than 850 postings across more than 450 companies, and hiring was fragmented across employers.[9][16] That means you should search by employer type, commute zone, and work arrangement instead of waiting for one marquee company to carry the market. The clearest concentration is by industry. The most-active slices were hospitals and health care (about 25%), healthcare (about 20%), retail (about 15%), restaurants (about 10%), and hospitality (about 10%), while separate local analysis also flagged education and enterprise settings as notable sources of demand.[11][36] In practice, Boston admin hiring is less about a single 'corporate office' lane and more about in-person operations that still need scheduling, front desk coverage, data entry, and office coordination.[12][13] Large organizations matter more than they first appear. About 35% of local postings came from enterprise employers, and the most consistently active named employers included Domino's Inc., Beth Israel Lahey Health, Inc., U-Haul International, and BILH Performance Network.[24][10] If you want faster interview odds, prioritize multi-site employers with steady operating workflows over small offices that hire only occasionally.

• Hospitals and health systems (high): This is the strongest concentration in the local posting mix, with hospitals and health care at about 25% and healthcare at about 20%.[11]
• Education and institutional employers (moderate): Education was identified as a notable local employer setting, especially for candidates who can handle front-office, scheduling, and multi-stakeholder coordination.[36]
• Retail, restaurant, and hospitality admin support (moderate): Retail accounts for about 15% of the sample, with restaurants and hospitality at about 10% each, making this a practical bridge for service workers moving into office support.[11]
• Pure corporate and professional-services offices (limited): These roles still exist, but the metro Professional and Business Services supersector was down -0.9667% year over year in August 2026, so this lane looks less forgiving than health-system or institutional hiring.[17]

Where to focus: Focus first on in-person admin coordinator, front-desk, receptionist, and executive-support roles at health systems, schools, and large multi-site employers you can realistically commute to.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Microsoft Office / Office Suite (table stakes): It is the baseline local office stack, with Microsoft Office appearing in about 20% of postings and Microsoft Office Suite in about 10%.[13]
• Excel (differentiator): Excel appears directly in about 10% of local postings and is repeatedly flagged alongside broader Office proficiency in local skill analysis.[13][36]
• Calendar management (differentiator): Calendar management shows up in about 15% of local postings and is one of the clearest dividing lines between basic clerical work and higher-trust support roles.[13]
• Data entry accuracy (table stakes): Data entry appears in about 15% of local postings, which makes accuracy and speed a practical hiring filter for many general office roles.[13]
• Customer service and front-desk communication (differentiator): Customer service appears in about 15% of local postings, and the local employer mix leans toward hospitals, retail, restaurants, and hospitality where service quality matters.[11][13]
• Outlook and Word (table stakes): Outlook and Word each appear in about 10% of local postings, making them part of the expected core toolkit rather than special extras.[13]
• Applied AI and data tools (premium): National administrative hiring research says AI use among administrative professionals rose from 26% in 2024 to 53% in 2025, 83% of administrative and customer support leaders would pay more for specialized or tech-enabled skills, and candidates with AI and data skills can command up to 25% higher pay.[37][38]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Patient access representative (bridge): It uses scheduling, front-desk, intake, and customer communication skills that overlap with office support, but sits in the healthcare-support-admin lane.
• HR coordinator or recruiting coordinator (pivot): Administrative support skills transfer well into interview scheduling, candidate communication, document handling, and calendar-heavy coordination.
• Accounts payable specialist or payroll coordinator (pivot): This is a logical move for candidates who like detail, deadlines, spreadsheet work, and document accuracy.
• Operations coordinator (both): It keeps the coordination, scheduling, vendor, and process-support side of admin work while moving closer to business operations.

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Rewrite your resume around proof, not duties: calendars managed, calls handled, records updated, documents produced, leaders supported, and customer issues resolved.
• Build one resume version for hospital and institutional employers, and another for enterprise employers; the language should not be identical.
• Cut remote-only filters from your search and replace them with a tight commute map, because most of this market is on-site.
• Add Microsoft Office, Excel, Outlook, calendar management, customer service, and data entry to your skills section only if you can back each one up in interview stories.
• Create a target list of multi-site employers and apply to role clusters, not one-off openings.

Days 31-60

• Complete a short Excel refresh focused on sorting, filters, basic formulas, scheduling sheets, and clean reporting outputs.
• Assemble a simple work sample pack: meeting agenda, travel outline, weekly status tracker, scheduling grid, and polished email examples.
• Ask former managers or coworkers for references that specifically validate reliability, discretion, speed, and communication under pressure.
• Track which titles produce responses in Boston, then narrow hard toward the two or three title families that actually convert to interviews.

Days 61-90

• If response rates stay weak, pivot toward the adjacent lane that best matches your strengths: patient access, HR coordination, finance support, or operations coordination.
• Add one premium layer to your profile, such as executive calendaring, reporting automation, or basic AI-assisted document and workflow support.
• Negotiate selectively: use local pay ranges as context, but anchor your ask to the business complexity of the role, not just the title.
• If you are still getting screened out, target contract or temp-to-perm routes with large systems and enterprise employers to get current in-market experience.

Methodology and Confidence

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

Confidence: Overall confidence: High. This report has current metro labor-market context, solid local wage anchors, and multiple recent checks on employer mix and work arrangement.

Limitations

• The freshest Boston labor-market context in this report is from August 2026, but the main local occupation wage benchmarks for office and administrative support are still from May 2025, so current pay may have moved since the official local wage release.[1][2]
• Boston-specific federal wage data is strongest at the broad office and administrative support group level; the cited local release does not publish detailed wages for executive assistants, office managers, or receptionists, so title-level pay should be read as approximate rather than exact.[1]
• Some August 2026 unemployment, employment, and labor-force change readings are preliminary and may be revised in later releases.[2][3][4][5][6]
• Statewide Massachusetts occupation signals from Revelio Public Labor Statistics were used as a proxy where metro-level occupation-by-postings data is not published, so they are directionally useful for Boston but not a perfect metro-only measure.[7][8]
• 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 than exact counts or precise shares.[9][10][11][12][13]

References

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21. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average · 2026-08 · fred.stlouisfed.org
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32. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
33. Federal Reserve Economic Data. S&P Cotality Case-Shiller MA-Boston Home Price Index · 2026-07 · fred.stlouisfed.org
34. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages News Release - 2025 A01 Results · 2026-05 · bls.gov
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38. Robert Half. Robert Half Real Talk: The 2026 Salary Trends You Can’t Afford to Miss · 2026-07 · roberthalf.com
39. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Unemployment Rate in Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH (MSA) · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
40. Federal Reserve Economic Data. All Employees: Total Nonfarm in Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH (MSA) · 2026-08 · fred.stlouisfed.org
41. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Artificial intelligence, information technology, and employment, 2024–34 : The Economics Daily : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-07 · bls.gov
42. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Industry and occupational employment projections overview and highlights, 2024–34 : Monthly Labor Review : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-08 · bls.gov

Live Openings in This Market

This report is published monthly; its companion page tracks the active Administrative & Office Support openings in Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Administrative & Office Support openings in Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH.