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

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: High

Chicago still has a large office-support base: office and administrative support accounted for 10.8% of metro employment, and the broader occupational family employed about 488,940 people in the latest local wage data.[4][7] But this is not an easy market right now. Metro unemployment was 5.2% in August 2026, up from 4.2% a year earlier, while Illinois administrative and office support employment was essentially flat and active postings were down 11.7% year over year.[6][8][9] There are still more than 1,200 postings across more than 700 companies in the last 90 days, and hiring is fragmented rather than dominated by one employer.[10][19]

Best positioned: Candidates with strong customer service, Microsoft Office/Excel, and data-entry skills who are open to on-site work have the best odds, especially in retail, restaurants, hospitals and health care, hospitality, and insurance.[3][2][12]

Main caution: The biggest misconception is that generic remote admin work is plentiful; about 90% of local postings are on-site, and the long-run national outlook for nonmedical secretaries and administrative assistants is decline or little change.[12][39]

What Changed Recently

• Chicago metro unemployment reached 5.2% in August 2026, up from 4.2% a year earlier.[6]: That usually means more applicants per opening, especially for generalist office roles.
• Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows Illinois administrative and office support employment essentially flat year over year in September 2026, but active postings down 11.7%.[8][9]: The market is still hiring, but it looks more like replacement hiring than broad expansion.
• Chicago still showed more than 1,200 postings across more than 700 companies over the last 90 days, and the typical active posting had been open around 29 days.[10][36]: Jobs exist across many employers, but employers do not appear to be leaving roles open indefinitely.
• National inflation rose 3.0% year over year in August 2026, the same pace as average hourly earnings growth in September 2026.[23][24]: For Chicago admin job seekers, that means a nominal raise is not automatically a real raise, so salary floor discipline matters.
• U.S. nonfarm payrolls stood at 159,044 thousand in September 2026, up 0.3128% year over year, while the federal funds rate was 3.75%.[22][25]: The broader economy is still adding jobs, but slowly, so local employers have room to stay selective.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high. Entry roles exist, but they attract a lot of competition and are often customer-facing and on-site.

Best target: Front desk, receptionist, dispatcher-adjacent, service scheduling, and admin coordinator roles at multi-site service employers, hospitals, insurance offices, and hospitality operators.

Biggest mistake: Applying only to remote or generic office assistant postings and ignoring customer-service-heavy roles.

Next step: Create a one-page resume version centered on phone handling, scheduling, Microsoft Office, data entry, cash reconciliation, and attendance reliability, then apply within the first 48 hours.

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: High for pure generalist admin roles, but better if you can show ownership of calendars, reporting, vendor coordination, travel, or executive support.

Best target: Executive assistant, office manager, senior administrative assistant, and cross-functional coordinator roles in insurance, professional services, and larger multi-location operators.

Biggest mistake: Leading with years of experience instead of showing measurable coordination wins and process improvements.

Next step: Build a short work-sample packet with calendar management, reporting dashboards, meeting logistics, travel planning, expense support, and process cleanups.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate if you are coming from retail, hospitality, or other customer-facing work; harder if your background does not show office-software fluency.

Best target: Reception, front-desk, patient-access, service scheduling, and customer-facing office roles where your service background is an asset.

Biggest mistake: Describing yourself as 'open to anything administrative' instead of translating past work into office language.

Next step: Rewrite your experience using admin terms: scheduling, records accuracy, escalations, CRM or POS updates, shift coordination, document handling, and customer issue resolution.

Salary Reality

stable pay slow advancement

Observed government pay is mid-market rather than standout. The Chicago metro mean for office and administrative support was $25.82 per hour in May 2025, and the broader local occupational family showed a 2025 annual median of $48,840, with the 25th percentile at $40,380 and the 75th percentile at $61,870.[4][5][28][29] Current posted pay looks directionally similar but not identical: local salary listings center on about $54k to $68k, while hourly-paid postings center on about $18 to $20 / hour.[30][31] Illinois new-opening salary offers averaged about $52,474 in September 2026, but that is a statewide mean on new postings rather than a Chicago median.[32]

This is a livable but not especially forgiving pay band for Chicago. It helps that local mean pay is slightly above the national office-support mean of $24.79 per hour, but the edge is small.[4] Chicago home prices were up 6.0% year over year through July 2026, so moderate admin pay can still feel tight if you are targeting downtown-heavy commuting patterns or living solo.[33]

The upside is that the field still offers broad entry points. The downside is that wage growth is not clearly outrunning cost pressure: national CPI was up 3.0% year over year and average hourly earnings were also up 3.0%.[23][24] You may need to trade flexibility for pay, since about 90% of local postings are on-site and only about 10% are hybrid.[12]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in executive support and more senior coordination work. The local office-support family reached $78,260 at the 90th percentile, and the national median for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants in administrative and support services was $79,680 in 2025.[34][35]

Caution: Do not overread top-end salary figures. General office clerk pay is much lower nationally at a $42,840 median, and the current local posting mix is heavily entry-level.[35][27] Posted salary ranges also mix very different roles together, so front desk, customer service, and executive support jobs should not be treated as one pay market.[30][27]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is spread across many employers, not concentrated in a handful of corporate offices. Over the last 90 days, the local market showed more than 1,200 postings across more than 700 companies, and the employer base in the sample was fragmented.[10][19] The most active industries were retail at about 20%, restaurants about 15%, hospitals and health care about 15%, hospitality about 10%, and insurance about 10%.[2] That points to a market where front-desk flow, customer contact, scheduling, call handling, and general office coordination matter more than niche back-office specialization. That mix should change how you search. The most consistently active named employers in the sample were Domino's Inc. with more than 75 postings and U-Haul International with more than 40, which suggests multi-location operators and service-heavy employers are a better first lane than waiting on a single marquee downtown office opening.[11] At the same time, Chicago professional and business services employment was 820.2 thousand in August 2026, up 0.3794% year over year, so corporate-support hiring has not disappeared; it is just steadier and more selective.[26]

• Service-heavy front office (high): Retail, restaurants, and hospitality make up a large share of local postings, so receptionist, front-desk, service scheduling, and customer-facing coordinator work is the clearest volume lane.[2]
• Healthcare and insurance office support (moderate): Hospitals and health care account for about 15% of postings and insurance about 10%, which supports demand for intake, patient-access, scheduling, and general office support; medical records and billing/coding are separate adjacent tracks.[2]
• Corporate admin and executive support (limited): Professional and business services remains sizable locally, but current postings skew about 70% entry-level and less than 5% senior, so higher-paying executive support roles exist in smaller numbers and are more selective.[26][27]

Where to focus: Start with on-site customer-facing admin roles in service industries, then run a second, narrower search for insurance-office and executive-support roles where pay is better.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Customer service (table stakes): Customer service is the most common local skill signal at about 20% of postings, which fits a market concentrated in retail, restaurants, hospitals and health care, hospitality, and insurance.[3][2]
• Microsoft Office and Excel (table stakes): Microsoft Office appears in about 15% of postings, while Microsoft Excel and Excel each show up at about 10%, making spreadsheet and document fluency a basic screening filter.[3]
• Data entry and document accuracy (table stakes): Data entry appears in about 15% of local postings, and employers also emphasize document and records management as part of the modern administrative skill set.[3][1]
• Administrative coordination and process management (differentiator): Administrative coordination, prioritization, and process management are specifically identified as relevant 2026 administrative skills, and they help separate stronger candidates from generic assistants.[1]
• AI literacy and data reporting (premium): AI literacy and data literacy are emerging administrative skills, and 83% of administrative and customer support leaders said they would pay more for specialized or tech-enabled skills.[37][1]
• Valid driver's license (differentiator): A valid driver's license appears in less than 5% of local postings, so it is not core to the market, but it can unlock field-based scheduler, dispatcher, and multi-site office roles.[38]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Project Coordinator (both): Administrative assistants are increasingly moving into project coordination as routine tasks become more automated.[1]
• Recruiting Coordinator (pivot): If you already handle scheduling, communication, and workflow organization, recruiting coordination is a natural nearby lane, though it belongs to the HR and people-ops track rather than core admin.
• Patient Access Coordinator (both): Hospitals and health care represent about 15% of local postings, creating a reasonable adjacent lane for front-desk, intake, and scheduling work; medical records and billing/coding are separate specializations.[2]
• Accounts Payable or Finance Operations Assistant (pivot): If your edge is Excel, accuracy, and document flow, finance-support work is a nearby step up, though accounting and payroll clerks belong to the finance and accounting track rather than this category.[3]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Split your resume into two versions: one for customer-facing front office roles and one for higher-trust admin coordination roles.
• Build a short proof-of-skill pack with one polished Excel sheet, one meeting-notes sample, and one scheduling or inbox-handling example.
• Prioritize on-site and hybrid roles first, and apply within 48 hours instead of batching applications once a week.
• Target employer types, not just titles: multi-location service employers, hospitals, insurance offices, hospitality groups, and business-services firms.

Days 31-60

• Add a concrete coordination story to your resume and interviews: a schedule you managed, a backlog you cleaned up, or a reporting process you improved.
• Expand into adjacent searches for project coordinator, recruiting coordinator, patient access, or finance operations support if your response rate on pure admin titles is weak.
• Run a response audit by lane: front desk, admin assistant, executive support, insurance office, healthcare intake, and dispatcher-adjacent roles.
• Practice AI-assisted office workflows in a safe way: draft summaries, clean spreadsheets, create templates, and learn how to review outputs for accuracy.

Days 61-90

• If you are still not converting interviews, narrow your title stack and own one lane instead of applying broadly to every office title.
• Pursue temporary or contract office assignments to build recent admin credibility and software proof points.
• Raise your ceiling by positioning for executive-support or coordinator work, not just generic assistant jobs.
• Reset compensation targets using actual response data: keep a floor, but stop anchoring on top-of-range postings unless your background clearly matches them.

Methodology and Confidence

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

Confidence: Overall confidence: High. Based on 20 direct local occupation data points and 44 total local evidence items with recent coverage.

Limitations

• Local occupation pay benchmarks here rely heavily on annual wage estimates from May 2025, while unemployment and broader market context run through August 2026, so current hiring conditions are fresher than the title-level pay picture.[4][5][6]
• This is a broad category: local BLS data for the office and administrative support family covers about 488,940 workers, and the broader occupational group represented 10.8% of metro employment, so executive assistant, front desk, customer service, and office clerk conditions can differ inside the same report.[7][4]
• Statewide occupation signals from Revelio Public Labor Statistics were used as a proxy where metro-level office-support readings were not published; in Illinois, occupation employment was essentially flat while active postings were down 11.7% year over year.[8][9]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so it is more reliable for spotting leading employers, work arrangement patterns, and recurring skills than for exact market totals or precise employer shares.[10][11][12][3]
• Some August 2026 metro labor-force, employment, and unemployment year-over-year changes are preliminary and may be revised later.[13][14][15][16]

References

1. Robert Half. Administrative career paths, skills and job search strategies for 2026 · 2026-06 · roberthalf.com
2. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
3. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin — May 2025 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-07 · bls.gov
5. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
6. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Unemployment Rate in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI (MSA) · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
7. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
8. Reveliolabs. Employment — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
9. Reveliolabs. Job Openings — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
10. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
11. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
12. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
13. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
14. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
15. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
16. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
17. Illinoisworknet. Layoff Assistance · 2026-09 · illinoisworknet.com
18. Tradingview. Chicago Business Activity Rises More than Expected · 2026-09 · tradingview.com
19. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
20. Fox32chicago. 172 jobs lost as Gerresheimer closes Chicago Heights plant, moves production to Italy, India · 2026-10 · fox32chicago.com
21. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
22. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
23. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average · 2026-08 · fred.stlouisfed.org
24. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
25. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Federal Funds Effective Rate · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
26. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
27. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
28. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
29. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
30. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
31. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
32. Reveliolabs. Salaries — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
33. Federal Reserve Economic Data. S&P Cotality Case-Shiller IL-Chicago Home Price Index · 2026-07 · fred.stlouisfed.org
34. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
35. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Administrative and Support Services: NAICS 561 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-09 · bls.gov
36. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
37. Robert Half. Robert Half Real Talk: The 2026 Salary Trends You Can’t Afford to Miss · 2026-07 · roberthalf.com
38. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
39. 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 Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Administrative & Office Support openings in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN.