Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: Medium

Houston still has real demand for office-support work, with more than 1,300 postings across more than 550 companies in the last 90 days and Houston Professional and Business Services employment up 2.2023% year over year in June 2026.[19][15] But this is not an easy market: the metro unemployment rate was 5.2% in June 2026, about 95% of sampled roles were on-site, and Texas-wide postings for administrative and office support were down 10.8% year over year even as Texas postings across all occupations rose 1.2%.[27][8][16] The best reading is a competitive market over the next 3-6 months—good enough to keep applying, but not forgiving of generic resumes or remote-only search strategies.

Best positioned: Candidates with immediate on-site availability and clear proof of Microsoft Office, customer service, data entry, CRM, and sector-specific experience in healthcare or lease administration have the best odds right now.[10][9][6][7]

Main caution: Do not mistake volume for ease: most local openings skew entry-level and in-person, so a broad "administrative professional" pitch usually underperforms a tightly targeted one.[8][14]

What Changed Recently

• Houston's Professional and Business Services base reached 580.1 thousand jobs in June 2026 and was up 2.2023% year over year.[15]: That is a positive local backdrop because many administrative roles sit inside business-service, staffing, and corporate support functions.
• Texas administrative and office support postings were down 10.8% year over year in July 2026 even though Texas postings across all occupations were up 1.2%.[16]: This means the category is softer than the broader Texas job market, so job seekers need sharper targeting than they would in a general rebound.
• Local hiring still showed breadth: more than 1,300 Houston-area postings across more than 550 companies were observed over the last 90 days, but about 95% were on-site and about 80% were entry-level.[19][8][14]: There are openings, but many are lower-leverage seats that favor local, schedule-flexible candidates over remote seekers or candidates holding out for senior office roles.
• Nationally, the job openings rate was 4.4% and the quits rate was 2% in June 2026, while total nonfarm payrolls were up only 0.1993% year over year in July 2026.[20][21][17]: Openings still exist, but slow payroll growth and lower quitting usually make employers more selective and reduce easy job-hopping.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high. Most sampled openings were entry-level, but that also means you are competing in the busiest part of the market.[14]

Best target: On-site administrative assistant, front desk, and customer-service-heavy office roles in food & beverage, healthcare, and retail, where the local posting mix is deepest.[13]

Biggest mistake: Applying as a generic "admin" without showing Microsoft Office, data entry, customer service, order processing, and schedule flexibility on the first page of your resume.[9][8]

Next step: Create a resume version for high-volume onsite roles and apply within the first week a posting appears, since typical active postings stay up around 32 days.[12]

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Competitive. The market has breadth, but mid-level and senior openings are a much smaller share than entry roles.[14]

Best target: Specialized admin tracks such as lease administration, healthcare administrative support, executive support, or office manager work where domain knowledge raises pay.[7][6][4]

Biggest mistake: Relying only on years of experience instead of proving system fluency, documentation ownership, and industry context.

Next step: Build two targeted narratives: one around executive/calendar/vendor support and one around sector-specific process work such as lease documents, renewals, or regulated office workflows.[7]

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate. This market rewards transferable service and coordination skills more than formal degrees in many postings.[25][9]

Best target: Move from retail, hospitality, or service work into customer-facing administrative roles where customer service, cash handling, and computer systems already transfer well.[13][9]

Biggest mistake: Targeting remote assistant jobs first; that is the smallest slice of the Houston market.[8]

Next step: Translate past work into office language—appointments, records accuracy, POS or CRM use, order processing, and conflict resolution—and be open to temp or contract entry points.

Salary Reality

moderate pay broad access

The clearest local government benchmark is narrower than the whole category: O*NET puts Houston secretaries and administrative assistants at a $36,660 median, with a $29,520 25th percentile and a $43,350 75th percentile.[1] Current broader market signals are higher: sampled Houston postings center on about $47k to $60k for salaried roles and about $17 to $20 / hour for hourly roles, while Robert Half places Houston administrative assistants at $46,500 and executive assistants at $77,978.[2][3][4]

In practice, generic front-desk and basic admin work often pays closer to the low-to-mid range, while specialized or higher-trust support roles move higher. Recent Houston examples ranged from $17-$18/hour for a general administrative assistant to $24.34-$31.04/hour at a healthcare organization and $55,000-$60,000/year for lease administration.[5][6][7]

The upside is that Houston still offers multiple pay tiers inside the same category; the downside is that the better-paying tiers usually require industry context, full on-site availability, or executive-facing responsibility.[8][6][7]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in executive assistant work, specialized real-estate support, and some healthcare administrative assignments rather than general receptionist or entry clerk work.[4][7][6]

Caution: Do not read executive assistant or niche-specialty figures as the normal Houston admin wage. The category spans everything from receptionist roles around $39,000 to executive assistant roles near $77,978, so title and sector matter a lot.[4]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is concentrated less in a few corporate headquarters and more across a long tail of employers. In the recent Houston sample, hiring was fragmented across employers, with food & beverage accounting for about 40% of postings, healthcare about 20%, retail about 15%, and Dominos the single most consistently active named employer with more than 350 postings.[24][13][11] That mix points job seekers toward operational admin, store/support-office, scheduling, and customer-facing coordinator work rather than waiting only for classic corporate executive-assistant openings. A second pocket is specialized support. A recent healthcare administrative assistant listing paid $24.34-$31.04/hour, and a Houston lease administrative assistant role in real estate paid $55,000-$60,000/year and required lease documentation lifecycle management.[6][7] These are fewer roles than the entry-level pool, but they are where experience with documents, systems, and industry workflows can raise your odds and your pay. Large employers matter, but they do not dominate the whole category. About 35% of sampled postings came from large employers and about 25% from enterprise employers, which is enough to make brand-name targets worthwhile without making the market winner-take-all.[26]

• High-volume operational admin (high): The biggest local pool is operational office support tied to food & beverage, retail, and similar service environments, with heavy on-site and entry-level skew.[13][8][14]
• Healthcare administrative support (high): Healthcare is a meaningful hiring pocket in the sample, and a recent Houston admin assignment in that segment paid $24.34-$31.04/hour.[13][6]
• Specialized real-estate and executive support (moderate): Lease administration and executive support appear to offer better pay, but they require narrower experience and stronger trust signals.[7][4]

Where to focus: If you need a job in the next 30-90 days, focus first on onsite administrative assistant roles in healthcare and other high-volume service sectors, then branch into specialized lease or executive support once you can show relevant systems and document ownership.[13][6][7]

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Microsoft Office (table stakes): Microsoft Office is a core local requirement and is also called out alongside Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint in current employer guidance.[9][10]
• Customer service (table stakes): It is the most-requested skill in the local posting sample at about 25%, which tells you many "admin" jobs are really service-and-coordination roles.[9]
• Data entry (table stakes): Data entry appears in the local skill mix and is a basic screening signal for accuracy and pace in office-support hiring.[9]
• Salesforce or other CRM use (differentiator): Current employer guidance highlights contact-management systems like Salesforce, which helps separate modern coordinators from purely clerical applicants.[10]
• Order processing and inventory-adjacent coordination (differentiator): Order processing and inventory management both show up in the local skill mix, suggesting many Houston admin openings sit close to operational workflow rather than purely executive support.[9]
• Lease documentation lifecycle management (premium): A current Houston lease administrative assistant role paying $55,000-$60,000/year specifically required handling amendments, renewals, and termination paperwork.[7]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Healthcare support administration (both): Healthcare already represents about 20% of the local posting mix, and a recent Houston healthcare admin assignment paid $24.34-$31.04/hour.[13][6]
• HR assistant or recruiting coordinator (pivot): If your strength is scheduling, communication, onboarding paperwork, and calendar management, the move is natural.
• Accounts payable or finance clerk (pivot): Data entry, order processing, cash handling, and computer systems skills already show up in Houston admin postings, so the skill jump is believable.[9]
• Operations coordinator (bridge): Inventory management and order processing appear in the local skill mix, suggesting many admin applicants already touch operational workflows.[9]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Split your resume into two versions: a high-volume onsite admin version using customer service, Microsoft Office, data entry, order processing, and cash handling keywords, and a specialization version for healthcare, lease, or executive support.[9][10][6][7]
• Prioritize on-site applications and clearly state commute range and start availability, because about 95% of sampled roles are on-site.[8]
• Build a target list of large employers plus staffing firms active in Houston admin hiring, including Dominos, The Reserves Network, Addison Group, and Murray Resources.[11][5][6][7]
• Set daily alerts for new postings and follow up quickly; active postings stay open around 32 days, so early applications matter.[12]

Days 31-60

• Add one concrete systems proof point to your resume—Excel reporting, Salesforce or CRM use, lease-document handling, or high-volume appointment scheduling—so you stop reading as generic support.[10][7]
• If interviews are thin, shift most of your applications toward healthcare and service-sector employers, which make up a large share of current local demand.[13]
• Register with at least two staffing firms for temp or contract administrative work, especially if you are trying to break into healthcare or real estate.[5][6][7]
• Prepare a work-sample pack: calendar management example, expense or invoice log, spreadsheet cleanup example, and a short document-quality checklist.

Days 61-90

• If you are still not landing interviews, pivot to adjacent roles such as healthcare support administration, HR support, accounts payable, or operations coordination where your admin skills transfer.
• Pick one specialization to own—executive support, lease administration, or regulated healthcare workflows—and rewrite your LinkedIn headline and resume summary around it.[4][6][7]
• Use pay data to reset targets: generic admin and receptionist roles are often lower, while specialty roles move higher, so narrow your search toward the pay band you actually want.[4][5][6][7]
• Track rejection patterns by work arrangement, pay, and industry; if remote-only or senior-only filters are blocking you, relax them and retest against the Houston market, where remote openings are scarce and senior roles are a small slice.[8][14]

Methodology and Confidence

This July 2026 report was generated on August 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: July 2026. Latest direct Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX data: July 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: Medium. The metro has solid local context data, but several role-level conclusions rely on broader category signals and representative job titles.

Limitations

• The strongest metro wage benchmark for this category is a May 2025 local wage series for secretaries and administrative assistants, so it does not fully represent executive assistants, office managers, receptionists, and other sub-roles in Houston today.[1]
• Several June 2026 Texas and Houston year-over-year labor figures are preliminary and can be revised, so small changes should be read directionally rather than as final counts.[15]
• Statewide office-support hiring and pay signals were used as a proxy where metro-by-occupation monthly series were not published, which means Houston can be somewhat stronger or weaker than the Texas average.[16]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so it is better for spotting work-arrangement patterns, leading employer names, and skill themes than for treating any posting count or share as a market total.[19][11][13][8][9]
• The July 2026 WARN filing in Missouri City is relevant local context, but it does not identify how many affected workers were in administrative roles specifically.[22]

References

1. Onetonline. Texas Wages: 43-6014.00 - Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive · 2025-05 · onetonline.org
2. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
3. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
4. Robert Half. Staffing, Recruitment & Job Search · 2025-10 · roberthalf.com
5. Jobs. Administrative Assistant Houston TX · 2026-07 · jobs.murrayresources.com
6. Trnstaffing. Administrative Assistant - The Reserves Network · 2026-07 · trnstaffing.com
7. Addisongroup. Administrative Assistant Job » Apply Today | Addison Group · 2026-08 · addisongroup.com
8. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
9. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
10. Rhi. Staffing, Recruitment & Job Search · 2026-07 · rhi.com
11. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
12. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
13. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
14. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
15. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
16. Reveliolabs. Job Openings — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
17. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-07 · data.bls.gov
18. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
19. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
20. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
21. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
22. Twc. Texas Workforce Commission · 2026-07 · twc.texas.gov
23. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
24. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
25. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
26. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
27. Stlouisfed. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis · 2026-07 · stlouisfed.org

Live Openings in This Market

This report is published monthly; its companion page tracks the active Administrative & Office Support openings in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Administrative & Office Support openings in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX.