Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: High

Dallas-Fort Worth is still a very large market for this work: office and administrative support accounted for 12.1% of metro employment in May 2025, and the metro had about 490,190 workers in the occupation group.[2][38] But the near-term market looks tougher than the size suggests, because metro unemployment reached 4.4% in August 2026 while Texas administrative and office-support postings were down 18.6% year over year and statewide employment in the occupation was down 0.7%.[10][4][5] You can still land a role here, especially in on-site, customer-facing environments, but expect more competition and slower response rates than a year ago.[37][8]

Best positioned: The strongest profile right now is someone open to on-site work who can show recent customer service, data entry, computer literacy, and Microsoft Office experience for restaurant, healthcare, hospitality, and retail employers.[37][8][9]

Main caution: The biggest misconception is that this is a remote-friendly admin market; about 95% of sampled postings were on-site and only about 5% were remote.[8]

What Changed Recently

• Metro unemployment was 4.4% in August 2026, with about 202,447 people unemployed, while the local employment level was up only 0.3326% year over year.[10][11][12]: That usually means more applicants chasing each opening, especially for broad administrative titles.
• Dallas-Fort Worth professional and business services employment reached 810.6 thousand in August and grew 3.1429% year over year, faster than the metro's total nonfarm growth of 0.9991%.[24][3]: Office-heavy employers are still adding jobs, so there is real demand backdrop even if admin hiring is selective.
• Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows Texas administrative and office-support postings down 18.6% year over year in September 2026, with statewide employment in the occupation down 0.7%.[4][5]: Openings exist, but they are not as plentiful as the market's size might imply.
• Nationally, CPI rose +3.0% year over year in August, average hourly earnings rose +3.0% in September, the federal funds rate was 3.75%, and total nonfarm payrolls were up 0.3128% year over year.[23][22][21][20]: For Dallas admin candidates, that points to a steady but not loose hiring climate, with limited room for employers to stretch pay on generalist roles.
• Dallas approved a city budget that included 108 layoffs, and covered non-uniformed General Fund staff were required to take three unpaid furlough days.[15][16]: Public-sector office roles look less attractive in the near term than private multi-site employers.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high.

Best target: Target on-site front desk, coordinator, dispatcher, and customer-facing office roles at restaurants, hospitality, retail, and healthcare operators, where entry-level openings are most common and about 75% of sampled postings are entry level.[37][26]

Biggest mistake: Applying only to remote assistant jobs when the local market is overwhelmingly on-site.[8]

Next step: Build a resume version that leads with phones, scheduling, customer interactions, data entry speed, cash handling, and Microsoft Office basics instead of a generic objective statement.

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate, but only if you look beyond generic administrative assistant titles.

Best target: Focus on office operations, executive-support, site-coordinator, and vendor-facing admin roles that ask for reporting, scheduling ownership, workflow support, or project coordination.[1][9]

Biggest mistake: Underselling process ownership and presenting yourself as only a task-taker.

Next step: Rewrite your last two roles into outcome bullets that show calendar ownership, expense handling, vendor coordination, reporting cadence, meeting logistics, and any systems you improved.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate if you are coming from retail, hospitality, food service, or call-center work; harder from unrelated backgrounds.

Best target: Aim for employers where customer service, cash handling, computer literacy, and data entry already matter, because those skills appear directly in the sampled posting mix.[37][9]

Biggest mistake: Failing to translate service metrics into office language such as accuracy, volume, scheduling, conflict resolution, and documentation.

Next step: Create a bridge narrative that connects your past work to front-desk or coordinator tasks, then apply in tight sector clusters instead of across every admin title.

Salary Reality

moderate pay broad access

Observed government pay data shows Dallas-Fort Worth office and administrative support jobs paid a $47,080 median, $51,170 mean, and $38,230 at the 25th percentile in 2025, with the 75th percentile at $59,490 and the 90th percentile at $76,330.[27][28][29][30][31] More current proxy signals are in the same neighborhood: sampled local postings center on about $50k to $65k, hourly-paid roles center on about $15 to $18 / hour, and Revelio Public Labor Statistics puts Texas mean offered pay on new openings at ~$48,660 in September 2026 (n=4,053).[32][33][34]

This is moderate pay for Dallas-Fort Worth rather than standout pay: the category's mean hourly wage was $24.60, well below the metro average for all occupations of $33.96.[2][35]

The upside is broad access, since most postings that state an education requirement ask for a high school diploma or equivalent and only about 10% mention a bachelor's degree.[36] The tradeoff is slower upside inside generalist roles, with about 75% of sampled postings at entry level and less than 5% at senior levels.[26]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in management-adjacent or executive-support tracks; for example, Dallas-Fort Worth administrative services managers averaged $136,460 a year in May 2025.[2]

Caution: Do not read that manager figure as typical for the category: it is a separate, much smaller leadership occupation with about 6,160 local jobs, not the pay floor for general administrative assistant or front-desk work.[2]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is concentrated less in pure headquarters admin jobs and more in embedded support roles inside service-heavy employers. In the local sample, the biggest posting mix sits in restaurants (about 30%), healthcare (about 15%), hospitality (about 15%), retail (about 10%), and hospitals and health care (about 10%).[37] Domino's Inc. appears as the most consistently active named employer with more than 250 sampled postings, but the broader market is fragmented across employers rather than dominated by a single brand.[25][7] That concentration matters because these employers often want admin work blended with customer-facing tasks. The most-requested skills in sampled postings include customer service and cash handling at about 20% each, plus data entry, inventory management, and computer literacy at about 15% each.[9] If your resume reads like general office help with no front-desk, phone, scheduling, or transaction-volume context, it will miss where the real volume sits. It is also an on-site, early-career-heavy market. About 95% of sampled postings are on-site, about 5% hybrid, and about 5% remote, while about 75% are entry level and about 25% are mid-level.[8][26] That makes Dallas-Fort Worth better for people willing to work at a site, cover shifts, and support multi-location operations than for candidates searching only for remote assistant jobs.

• Multi-site service operators (high): Restaurants, hospitality, and retail account for a large share of sampled demand, and employers often want customer-facing admin support rather than purely back-office help.[37][9]
• Healthcare front office (moderate): Healthcare and hospitals contribute about a quarter of sampled postings combined, but the best-fit roles here are front desk, scheduling, and general office support rather than the medical-records or billing work routed to another category.[37]
• Office coordination inside professional and business services (moderate): Dallas-Fort Worth professional and business services employment was 810.6 thousand in August 2026, up 3.1429% year over year, so office-heavy employers remain a useful target even though admin openings are not the easiest slice of that growth.[24]

Where to focus: Prioritize on-site roles at multi-site service employers and front-office healthcare sites, then use those wins to move toward better-paid coordination or management-adjacent roles.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Customer service (table stakes): Customer service shows up in about 20% of sampled postings, and the local mix is tilted toward restaurants, hospitality, retail, and front-office healthcare work.[9][37]
• Data entry (table stakes): Data entry appears in about 15% of sampled postings and is one of the clearest signals that you can handle transactional office work accurately.[9]
• Microsoft Office and computer literacy (differentiator): Computer literacy shows up in about 15% of sampled postings and Microsoft Office in about 10%, so basic proficiency is expected and stronger fluency helps you stand out.[9]
• Workflow automation (premium): Robert Half identifies workflow automation as a specialized administrative skill, and 83% of administrative leaders say they typically offer higher starting salaries to candidates with specialized skills.[1]
• Project coordination (premium): Project coordination is one of the specialized skills Robert Half flags as valuable in administrative hiring, and it also opens a cleaner path into adjacent roles.[1]
• Executive support (differentiator): Robert Half lists executive support among the higher-value administrative skill areas, which helps separate advanced assistants from general office applicants.[1]
• CAP, Microsoft Office Specialist, or project-management credentials (differentiator): Robert Half specifically calls out Certified Administrative Professional, Microsoft Office Specialist, and project-management credentials as relevant qualifications for administrative career development.[1]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Project coordinator (both): Robert Half describes project coordinator as a common next step out of administrative assistant work.[1]
• Operations support coordinator (bridge): Robert Half also points to operations support as a realistic progression path for administrative talent.[1]
• Administrative services manager (pivot): Dallas-Fort Worth had about 6,160 administrative services managers in May 2025, showing a real local step-up path beyond general administrative work.[2]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Create two resume versions: one for front-desk and customer-facing admin work, and one for coordinator or office-operations work.
• Build a target list of multi-site employers in restaurants, hospitality, retail, healthcare front office, and professional services instead of searching only broad admin titles.
• Add measurable proof points to your resume such as call volume, scheduling volume, invoice or data-entry accuracy, cash-handling totals, or meeting-support load.
• Set a realistic on-site commute radius and apply only within that zone so you can respond quickly to interview requests.
• Practice a short interview story that explains how you handle interruptions, competing priorities, and upset customers without dropping accuracy.

Days 31-60

• Complete a visible skills proof point such as an Excel, Microsoft Office, or workflow-automation project you can discuss in interviews.
• Shift part of your search toward coordinator, executive-support, and project-support titles if generic administrative assistant response rates stay weak.
• Build a tighter employer list around recurring-location businesses where hiring tends to be steadier than one-off small offices.
• Ask former managers for references that speak to reliability, attendance, confidentiality, and follow-through, because those traits decide many late-stage admin hires.

Days 61-90

• If you are not getting traction, pivot sectors before you pivot cities: move from generic office searches into healthcare front office, hospitality admin, or multi-site operations support.
• Start a credential path that matches your target lane, such as Microsoft Office Specialist for general office work or a project-based credential for coordinator roles.
• Package your work as systems support rather than clerical help by showing how you reduced errors, improved scheduling flow, or kept teams organized.
• For stronger long-run upside, map a deliberate move into project coordination or administrative services management instead of waiting for pay growth inside purely generalist roles.

Methodology and Confidence

This September 2026 report was generated on October 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: September 2026. Latest direct Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX data: September 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: High. Direct local occupation and market-context data are recent and consistent across multiple public and research sources.

Limitations

• Local occupation wage and employment detail for office and administrative support comes from May 2025 estimates, while unemployment and sector context are more current through August 2026, so pay conditions can move faster than the occupation tables show.[2][3]
• Some of the freshest occupation-specific direction signals are available only at the Texas level, so statewide administrative and office-support openings and employment were used as a proxy when newer Dallas-Fort Worth occupation readings were not available.[4][5]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so it is more reliable for direction, leading employer names, work-arrangement patterns, and skill themes than for exact counts or exact employer shares.[6][7][8][9]
• This report keeps nearby but separate categories out of scope, so medical billing and coding, accounting or payroll clerks, warehouse clerks, and HR assistants are not counted here even when titles sound similar.
• Several August 2026 local labor-market year-over-year changes are preliminary and may be revised in later government releases.[10][11][12][13]

References

1. Robert Half. Administrative career paths, skills and job search strategies for 2026 · 2026-12 · roberthalf.com
2. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington — May 2025 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-08 · bls.gov
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
4. Reveliolabs. Job Openings — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
5. Reveliolabs. Employment — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
6. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
7. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
8. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
9. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
10. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
11. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
12. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
13. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
14. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
15. Cbsnews. Dallas leaders approve $5.66 billion budget after 14-hour debate · 2026-09 · cbsnews.com
16. Dallasexpress. Dallas Budget Shortfall Shuts City Hall, Libraries For Final Furlough Day · 2026-09 · dallasexpress.com
17. Laborcurrent. Dallas-Fort Worth Layoffs 2026 — WARN Act Notices · 2026-10 · laborcurrent.com
18. Mysanantonio. Client Challenge · 2026-09 · mysanantonio.com
19. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
20. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
21. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Federal Funds Effective Rate · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
22. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
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. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
25. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
26. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
27. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
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. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
31. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
32. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
33. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
34. Reveliolabs. Salaries — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
35. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington — May 2025 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-08 · bls.gov
36. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
37. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
38. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov

Live Openings in This Market

This report is published monthly; its companion page tracks the active Administrative & Office Support openings in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Administrative & Office Support openings in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX.