Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: Medium

Chicago is still a large market for this field, with over 310,000 office and administrative support workers in the metro, but it is not an easy market right now.[1] Metro unemployment was 4.9% in April 2026, up 11.3636% year over year, while metro employment was down 2.5326% and the labor force was down 2.0961%.[2][3][4] The better news is that administrative and office support postings in Illinois were up 0.6% year over year even as Illinois postings across all occupations were down 5.5%, so this category is holding up better than the broader market without becoming loose.[5]

Best positioned: Candidates with on-site availability, strong customer service and communication skills, solid Microsoft Office habits, and visible comfort with AI or workflow automation tools have the best odds, especially in healthcare, education, and multi-site service employers.[6][7][8][9][10]

Main caution: The biggest misconception is assuming this is a remote-friendly market; about 90% of postings are on-site, about 10% are hybrid, and less than 5% are remote.[7]

What Changed Recently

• The Chicago labor market got a bit softer: metro unemployment reached 4.9% in April 2026, up 11.3636% year over year, while the number of unemployed residents rose 7.2767% year over year.[2][11]: That usually means more competition per opening, even when roles are still being posted.
• Administrative and office support is holding up better than the broader Illinois market: statewide postings for the occupation were up 0.6% year over year in May 2026, while postings across all occupations in Illinois were down 5.5%, and occupation employment was essentially flat year over year.[12][5]: This is a reason to keep targeting the category, but to expect selective hiring rather than fast hiring.
• Nationally, employers had 7618 thousand job openings in April 2026, up 7.3260% year over year, but hires were 5116 thousand and down 5.1011% year over year.[13][14]: For job seekers, that often feels like more posted roles but slower decisions, longer interview cycles, and more requisitions that never move quickly.
• Local hiring is broad but very in-person: over the last 90 days, Chicago showed more than 1,400 postings across more than 750 companies, with about 75% of roles at entry level and about 90% on-site.[15][7][16]: You can find openings across many employers, but commute range and speed of application matter more than in remote-heavy office markets.
• The skill bar is shifting upward: Illinois WorkNet listed a local Executive Assistant Training Program covering Microsoft Office, SharePoint, QuickBooks, and Adobe Acrobat, while employer guidance increasingly expects AI fluency and automation-tool comfort in administrative work.[17][9][10]: A generic admin resume is weaker than it was a year ago; employers increasingly want proof that you can handle both office routines and modern tools.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high. There are plenty of entry-skewed openings, but that also means lots of competition and more screening for basic office readiness.[16]

Best target: Target on-site administrative assistant, front desk, scheduling, and customer-facing office roles in healthcare-adjacent, education, hospitality, and retail settings where the local posting mix is strongest.[6][7][8]

Biggest mistake: Applying as a generic helper instead of showing customer service, communication, time management, and Microsoft Office directly in your resume bullets.[8]

Next step: Build a proof-based application set: one resume version for front desk/service-heavy roles, one for admin support, and a short work sample showing calendar management, email drafting, and spreadsheet cleanup with modern office tools.[9][10]

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate. There are openings, but the better-paid slice is narrower and more specialized.

Best target: Aim for office manager, executive-support, and admin coordinator roles at enterprise employers or multi-site organizations, where complexity and coordination needs are higher.[23][24][18][25]

Biggest mistake: Leaning only on years of experience; employers increasingly want reporting, CRM familiarity, process ownership, and workflow automation, not just calendar coverage.[18][20][10]

Next step: Rewrite your resume around business impact: vendor coordination, executive support, reporting packs, meeting cadence management, office operations fixes, and any tools you used to reduce repetitive work.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate to high. Transferable service skills help, but many employers still expect office-tool fluency and local on-site availability.[7][26][8]

Best target: Start with receptionist, front desk, and admin coordinator roles where customer service transfers cleanly and degree barriers are lower.[26][8]

Biggest mistake: Over-targeting remote roles or jumping straight to executive assistant jobs before proving office systems and workflow discipline.[7][18]

Next step: Use a short training option to show recent software practice, then apply to employers within a realistic commute radius instead of spraying remote applications.[17][7]

Salary Reality

stable pay slow advancement

Local posted salary ranges across the category center on about $58k to $70k, with a broader 25th-75th band of about $44k to $90k, but that category mix includes higher-paid sub-roles and should not be read as a single-title median.[24] For a more title-specific benchmark, Robert Half puts Chicago administrative assistants at $42,000 at the low end, $46,500 at the midpoint, and $52,750 at the upper end.[34] Revelio Public Labor Statistics reports a mean offered salary on new Illinois openings of about $55,160 in May 2026, based on n=3,895, versus about $54,397 nationally based on n=175,456.[35]

Pay is decent for steady office work, but it does not stretch as far as it first appears in a metro with a moderate to high cost of living.[36]

The upside is steadier than many lower-wage service roles, but the tradeoff is high on-site demand, slower advancement, and a wider gap between generic admin work and specialized executive or office-management work.

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in executive assistant and office manager tracks rather than generic admin assistant jobs; experienced executive assistants in major metros can reach around $75,000 or more, and office manager benchmarks are about $66,000 nationally.[18][25]

Caution: Do not overread the top of the local posted range; higher figures usually reflect specialized support, broader operations ownership, or senior office-management scope rather than typical entry administrative work.[34][18][25][24]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is spread across a long list of employers rather than a few dominant names. In the last 90 days, Chicago showed more than 1,400 administrative and office support postings across more than 750 companies, and hiring in the sample is described as fragmented. Domino's Pizza was one of the most consistently active named employers, with more than 100 postings in the sample.[15][28][27] The strongest pockets are not evenly distributed. Healthcare accounts for about 30% of sampled postings, followed by food and beverage at about 20%, hospitality at about 15%, education at about 15%, and retail at about 10%.[6] The market also skews heavily toward practical, in-person support work: about 75% of postings are entry level, about 90% are on-site, and the most common stated education requirements are high school or high school diploma or equivalent rather than a bachelor's degree.[7][16][26]

• Healthcare-adjacent office support (high): Front desk, scheduling, reception, and general office coordination appear to be the largest pocket, with healthcare making up about 30% of sampled postings.[6]
• Food, hospitality, and multi-site service employers (high): Food and beverage plus hospitality make up roughly 35% of the sample, which points to recurring demand for customer-facing coordinators, reception, and office support tied to service operations.[6]
• Education and campus-style administration (moderate): Education represents about 15% of the local mix, making it a useful target for candidates who want structured office environments and repeatable admin tasks.[6]
• Enterprise office operations (moderate): About 30% of postings in the sample come from enterprise employers, which can be attractive for candidates with stronger process, reporting, and stakeholder-management experience.[23]

Where to focus: If you want the best odds in the next 90 days, focus first on on-site healthcare-adjacent and education-facing support roles, then expand into hospitality, food-service, and enterprise office operations.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Customer service (table stakes): It is the most common local requirement, showing up in about 40% of sampled postings, which means many office jobs here are really service-and-coordination jobs in disguise.[8]
• Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365 (table stakes): Local postings frequently call for Microsoft Office, and broader employer guidance treats Microsoft 365 and related digital productivity tools as core rather than optional skills.[8][18]
• Communication, time management, and organization (table stakes): Communication appears in about 25% of local postings, time management in about 20%, and organizational skills in about 10%, so these are basic filters, not soft extras.[8]
• AI fluency with tools like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot (differentiator): Employer guidance increasingly expects administrative candidates to be comfortable with generative AI tools, and workers who list AI skills on their profiles are reported as 17% more likely to get promoted.[9][19]
• Workflow automation tools (differentiator): Tools such as Zapier, Power Automate, and Calendly are emerging as useful admin skills because they automate scheduling, follow-ups, and repetitive office tasks, with examples citing savings of 10+ hours a week.[10]
• Data literacy, reporting, and CRM familiarity (premium): Employer guidance increasingly expects business support staff to handle reporting, KPI tracking, CRM workflows, and more technical support tasks alongside classic administration.[18][20]
• SharePoint and document workflow tools (differentiator): A current local training option for executive assistants in Chicago-area locations includes SharePoint, Adobe Acrobat, and related office workflow tools, which signals practical demand for document-heavy support skills.[17]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Customer Support Specialist (bridge): The overlap is strong because many local admin roles emphasize customer service, communication, and problem solving.
• Sales Coordinator / Account Coordinator (both): This path uses the same scheduling, follow-up, document, and stakeholder-support skills but ties them to revenue teams.
• Project Coordinator (pivot): Administrative support often turns into meeting management, documentation, status tracking, and follow-through, which maps well to project work.
• Facilities Coordinator / Workplace Coordinator (bridge): This is a strong fit for candidates comfortable with on-site office operations, vendors, visitors, and daily problem solving.

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Cut your search to employers within a commute you can sustain five days a week, because most local openings are on-site.
• Create two resume versions: one for front desk and customer-facing admin work, and one for office coordinator or executive-support work.
• Add one visible proof of tool readiness: Excel scheduling sheet, Outlook calendar workflow, or AI-assisted email and follow-up process.
• Apply first to healthcare-adjacent, education, hospitality, and multi-site service employers instead of searching the whole market at once.
• Remove unrelated routed experience from your headline and lead with customer service, communication, Microsoft Office, and problem solving.

Days 31-60

• Complete a short refresher in Microsoft Office, SharePoint, or document workflow and add it to your resume immediately.
• Track response rates by sector and shift your effort toward the one that gives you the best interview conversion.
• Broaden titles beyond administrative assistant to receptionist, front desk coordinator, office coordinator, and client services support.
• Build a short interview story bank around vendor issues, scheduling conflicts, inbox triage, upset visitors or customers, and process fixes.
• If your applications are not moving, add adjacent targets such as customer support specialist or sales coordinator.

Days 61-90

• If you are still missing traction, pivot from generic admin applications into specialized tracks: executive support, office operations, project coordination, or customer support.
• Use one local training completion or software credential as a reset point and relaunch your resume around updated tools.
• Target enterprise employers and repeat-hiring sectors where process-heavy support work is more common.
• Treat remote-only search as a low-probability side bet, not your main plan.
• Reassess pay expectations by title and sector so you do not reject solid offers while holding out for top-end ranges that belong to more specialized roles.

Methodology and Confidence

This May 2026 report was generated on June 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: May 2026. Latest direct Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN data: June 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: Medium. The report combines direct local labor data with newer proxy hiring and pay signals, but some conclusions still require category-level inference.

Limitations

• The best metro-wide count for office and administrative support employment in Chicago is from May 2024, so the category size is solidly documented but not fully current to spring 2026.[1]
• Several April 2026 local labor-market year-over-year figures are preliminary, including the rise in unemployment and the declines in employment and labor force, so the exact magnitude may later be revised.[2][11][3][4]
• Pay figures come from a mix of title-specific salary guides and broader posting-based estimates, so a Chicago administrative assistant benchmark and a wider administrative-and-office-support salary band are not measuring the exact same slice of work.[34][24]
• 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 exact market shares.[15]
• Metro WARN notices from Spirit Airlines, HelloFresh, and Capital One are useful local risk signals, but they are not limited to administrative occupations and should be read as competition pressure, not as direct evidence of admin layoffs.[29][30][31]

References

1. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin — May 2024 · 2025-04 · bls.gov
2. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
5. Reveliolabs. Job Openings - Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-05 · reveliolabs.com
6. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
7. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
8. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
9. Robert Half. Why 2026 is a great year to be an administrative assistant · 2026-03 · roberthalf.com
10. Abmcollege. Top 13 skills every Administrative Assistant need in 2026 - ABM College Canada · 2026-04 · abmcollege.com
11. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
12. Reveliolabs. Employment - Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-05 · reveliolabs.com
13. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
14. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
15. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
16. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
17. Apps. WIOA Training Program · 2026-05 · apps.illinoisworknet.com
18. Salaryguide-americas. U.S. - 2026 Salary & Hiring Trends Guide | Hays · 2025-10 · salaryguide-americas.hays.com
19. Canaistealmyjob. 7 AI Tools for Administrative Assistants in 2026 – Complete Guide - Can AI Steal My Job · 2026-05 · canaistealmyjob.com
20. Reed. Business support & administration professional salary guide 2026 · 2025-11 · reed.com
21. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
22. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-05 · data.bls.gov
23. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
24. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
25. Bluesignal. 2026 Compensation Trends and Salary Guide - Blue Signal Search · 2025-11 · bluesignal.com
26. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
27. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
28. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
29. Pjstar. Spirit Airlines shutdown spurs mass layoffs at O'Hare · 2026-05 · pjstar.com
30. Patch. Illinois Layoffs Top 8,000 In Recent Months As Major Store Closings, Job Cuts Hit · 2026-05 · patch.com
31. Pjstar. WARN Act: More than 1,000 Illinois workers affected by layoffs · 2026-05 · pjstar.com
32. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
33. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-05 · callings.ai
34. Robert Half. 2026 Administrative and Customer Service Salaries and Compensation Trends · 2025-10 · roberthalf.com
35. Reveliolabs. Salaries - Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-05 · reveliolabs.com
36. C2er. The Council for Community and Economic Research – Promoting excellence in community and economic research since 1961 · 2026-01 · c2er.org