Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: Medium

Denver still has real Administrative & Office Support demand, with more than 750 recent postings across more than 400 companies in the last 90 days.[1] But the broader Colorado picture is cooler: Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows employment in this occupation family essentially flat year-over-year while active postings are down 5.6%.[9][10] That points to a market driven more by replacement hiring than broad expansion, so landing a role is doable but usually faster for candidates who can take on-site, customer-facing office work rather than waiting for a remote or highly specialized opening.[5][6]

Best positioned: Candidates with recent front-desk, receptionist, office coordinator, or multi-site admin experience; solid Microsoft Office skills; strong customer service; and willingness to work on-site have the best odds right now.[5][6]

Main caution: The biggest trap is assuming this is a flexible remote-office market: about 90% of local postings are on-site, and Denver-area prices were up 5.0% over the year ending May 2026.[5][11]

What Changed Recently

• Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows Colorado Administrative & Office Support postings down 5.6% year-over-year, while occupation employment is essentially flat.[10][9]: Fresh openings appear thinner than last year, so searches are more likely to feel competitive even without a collapse in existing jobs.
• In Denver, the local sample still shows more than 750 postings across more than 400 companies, and hiring is fragmented rather than dominated by one employer.[1][2]: Jobs are spread across many employers, which rewards a broad application strategy more than waiting for one ideal company.
• National job openings rose 3.8851% year-over-year to 7,594 thousand in May 2026, but hires fell 2.9655% to 5,170 thousand.[13][14]: That usually shows up as slower, more selective hiring: more live postings, but fewer quick fills.
• The local role mix is heavily entry-skewed, at about 75% entry-level, and the work arrangement mix is about 90% on-site, about 5% hybrid, and about 5% remote.[4][5]: This helps newer candidates find openings, but it makes the market much tougher for people targeting remote or senior-only roles.
• The Denver-Aurora-Lakewood CPI rose 5.0% over the 12 months ending in May 2026.[11]: Pay discussions matter more because a merely acceptable offer can still feel tight after housing, commuting, and everyday costs.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high. There are many entry openings, but they attract a wide applicant pool because about 75% of local postings skew entry-level.[4]

Best target: Target on-site front desk, receptionist, office clerk, and admin coordinator roles in healthcare, food service, hospitality, and retail first.[7][5]

Biggest mistake: Using a generic resume that leaves out customer service, Microsoft Office, data entry, cash handling, or time-management examples that employers actually ask for.[6]

Next step: Build two resume versions this week: one for customer-facing office roles and one for general office support, both with concrete examples of scheduling, phone coverage, document handling, and accuracy.

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate. You have leverage if you can show ownership of calendars, vendor coordination, office systems, or multi-site support, but the market is not expanding quickly.

Best target: Aim at office manager, executive-support, and coordinator roles in larger employers; about 30% of the local sample comes from enterprise companies.[12]

Biggest mistake: Holding out for remote-only work in a market where only about 5% of postings are remote.[5]

Next step: Reframe your resume around outcomes: complex scheduling, process cleanup, workflow tools, executive support, vendor management, and office operations ownership.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate to high. The easiest switch is into customer-facing admin work, not pure executive-assistant roles.

Best target: Go after roles where customer service and office tasks overlap, since customer service is the most common requested skill and entry roles dominate the mix.[6][4]

Biggest mistake: Trying to jump straight into polished executive-support roles without recent proof of office-process work, calendaring, or document control.

Next step: Translate prior experience into office language: scheduling, inbox management, record accuracy, front-desk coverage, escalation handling, and spreadsheet tracking.

Salary Reality

moderate pay broad access

In the local posting sample, salaried roles center on about $60k to $75k, while hourly roles center on about $19 to $21 / hour.[20][21] As a broader benchmark, the mean offered salary on new Administrative & Office Support openings in Colorado was ~$56,332 in June 2026, based on a sample of n=2,309.[22]

That is decent but not exceptional pay for Denver. It sits well below the ~$81,062 mean offered salary across all Colorado openings, and local inflation was 5.0% over the year ending May 2026.[22][11]

The tradeoff is access versus upside: this market offers a broad set of entry and mid-level openings, but about 75% of postings are entry-level and about 90% are on-site, which limits bargaining power unless you bring stronger office-operations ownership or executive-support experience.[4][5]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay usually sits in salaried office-manager and executive-support paths at larger employers, especially when you can own scheduling, vendors, reporting, and workflow systems.

Caution: Do not overread the top of the posted range. The broader local band of about $50k to $95k spans very different sub-roles, and the statewide salary benchmark is a sample-based mean for new openings rather than a guaranteed Denver median.[20][22]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is concentrated in customer-facing and location-level support work more than in purely corporate back-office jobs. In the local sample, healthcare accounts for about 25% of postings, followed by food & beverage at about 20%, hospitality at about 15%, retail at about 15%, and sports & recreation at about 10%.[7] For this category, that usually means front desk, scheduling, intake, office coordination, dispatcher-style support, and general location administration rather than specialist work like medical billing or accounting clerical functions. The employer base is broad, not winner-take-all. We observed more than 750 postings across more than 400 companies in the last 90 days, and the sample is fragmented across employers.[1][2] About 30% of postings come from enterprise employers, which is useful if you want clearer systems and possible advancement, but many openings also come from multi-site service businesses where reliability, customer handling, and schedule flexibility matter more than formal credentials.[12][17]

• Healthcare front desk and scheduling (high): Healthcare is about 25% of the local posting mix, making patient-facing office support, scheduling, and reception the clearest high-volume lane inside this market's admin demand.[7]
• Multi-site consumer businesses (high): Food & beverage, hospitality, and retail together make up about half of the local sample, which favors candidates with customer service, cash handling, and fast-paced location support experience.[7][6]
• Enterprise office coordination (moderate): About 30% of local postings come from enterprise employers, creating a smaller but attractive lane for candidates who can show calendar management, document workflows, and office systems ownership.[12][8]

Where to focus: Focus first on on-site, customer-facing admin roles in healthcare and multi-site service employers, then use that seat to move into office manager or executive-support work later.[7][5]

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365 (table stakes): Microsoft Office appears in about 15% of local postings, and broader Microsoft 365 tools are increasingly treated as baseline office fluency.[6][8]
• Customer service (table stakes): Customer service is the most-requested local skill at about 25%, which matches how much demand sits in front desk and service-heavy environments.[6][7]
• Data entry and document accuracy (differentiator): Data entry shows up in about 10% of local postings, and it is one of the cleanest ways to prove office-readiness without prior executive-support experience.[6]
• Calendar and workflow automation tools (differentiator): Tools such as Calendly, Zapier, and Power Automate are moving toward table-stakes for office support roles because they cut manual coordination work.[8]
• Project and task platforms (differentiator): Asana, ClickUp, Trello, Monday.com, and Wrike are increasingly common operating tools around office support and coordination work.[8]
• Cash handling and inventory awareness (differentiator): Cash handling appears in about 15% of local postings and inventory management in about 10%, reflecting how much admin demand is tied to service and location-based employers.[6][7]
• Selective certification strategy (table stakes): Local postings do not show a broadly required admin credential; the most common named certification was propane filling certification at less than 5%, which is niche rather than generally useful.[15]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Project Coordinator (both): It uses the same scheduling, follow-up, documentation, and meeting support skills as stronger admin roles.
• Workplace or Facilities Coordinator (bridge): This is a natural bridge for candidates with front-desk, vendor coordination, office supply, and site-support experience.
• Patient Access Representative or Medical Reception (bridge): Healthcare is a major local hiring lane, and the front-desk, intake, and scheduling side is a practical adjacent move for admin candidates.
• Client Success or Sales Operations Coordinator (pivot): This path rewards strong communication, scheduling, follow-up, and internal coordination skills.
• Document Control or Compliance Assistant (pivot): It builds on file accuracy, version control, and process discipline that strong admin candidates already use.

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Split your resume into two versions: one for customer-facing admin jobs and one for general office coordination, using the local priority skills of customer service, Microsoft Office, data entry, cash handling, and time management.[6]
• Set a realistic commute radius and prioritize on-site applications first, since about 90% of local postings are on-site and only about 5% are remote.[5]
• Build a target list across healthcare, food service, hospitality, retail, and sports/recreation instead of focusing on one industry, because demand is spread across those segments.[7]
• Prepare one proof-of-work sample, such as a scheduling tracker, meeting agenda pack, shared inbox workflow, or clean spreadsheet, so interviews feel less abstract.

Days 31-60

• Add one project tool and one automation tool to your resume with a real example, such as Asana plus Calendly or Trello plus Zapier.[8]
• If response rates are weak, tilt harder toward receptionist, front desk, scheduling, and office coordinator titles rather than waiting for executive-assistant openings.
• Ask recruiters and employers directly about backfill roles; flat employment and lower postings suggest replacement hiring matters more than broad growth right now.[9][10]
• Track callback rates by title and industry, then double down on the one segment where you get the fastest movement.

Days 61-90

• If your search is still slow, widen into adjacent paths such as project coordinator, workplace coordinator, patient access, or client success coordination.
• Turn every temp, contract, or part-time office assignment into a promotion story by documenting vendor coordination, reporting, process cleanup, and calendar ownership.
• Negotiate the full package, not just base pay, because local inflation is still running at 5.0% and commuting costs matter in an on-site market.[11][5]
• If you have been filtering for remote-only roles, loosen that filter; it is too small a slice of this market to anchor a 90-day search.[5]

Methodology and Confidence

This June 2026 report was generated on July 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: July 2026. Latest direct Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO data: July 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: Medium. The market direction is reasonably clear, but some conclusions depend on statewide occupation signals and metro posting samples rather than a full metro occupation series.

Limitations

• Metro-specific public data for this occupation is limited, so this page uses Denver-area price data plus Colorado statewide labor and occupation signals to judge conditions in the Denver metro.
• Statewide occupation trends can miss metro-specific pockets of strength or weakness, especially between downtown office-support roles and customer-facing front-desk jobs in suburban service locations.
• Several government year-over-year readings used here are preliminary and may be revised, so short-term changes should be read as directional rather than final.
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so demand direction, leading employer names, and recurring skill patterns are more reliable than exact counts or exact share splits.
• Administrative & Office Support is a broad bucket, and titles such as receptionist, office manager, executive assistant, dispatcher, and office clerk can have very different pay, competition, and scheduling expectations.

References

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