Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in Kansas City, MO-KS?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: High

Kansas City is still a workable market for administrative and office support, but it is not an easy one: metro unemployment was 3.9% in August 2026, Kansas City professional and business services employment was up 0.8170% year-over-year, and the metro showed more than 300 postings across more than 200 companies over the last 90 days.[5][25][12] The catch is that Missouri administrative & office support postings were down 10.8% year-over-year even though statewide employment in the occupation was essentially flat, which usually means replacement hiring is happening but fewer seats are being openly advertised.[11][10] Expect a real market, not a frozen one—but one where employers can be choosy and where candidates with stronger tools, reliability, and in-office availability will win faster.

Best positioned: Candidates with recent on-site office experience and visible strength in Microsoft Office, Excel, data entry, and customer-facing admin work have the best odds, especially in hospitals and health care, hospitality, restaurants, and education.[34][16][15]

Main caution: Do not assume broad office work is either remote-friendly or structurally expanding; about 95% of local postings were on-site, and the BLS expects nonmedical secretaries and administrative assistants to decline or show little change through 2034.[15][19]

What Changed Recently

• Kansas City's overall labor market stayed fairly tight in August 2026: unemployment was 3.9% and the unemployment level was down -5.5872% year-over-year.[5][6]: That supports baseline hiring, but it also means employers can screen harder because fewer workers are actively unemployed.
• Kansas City professional and business services employment reached 185.1 thousand and was up 0.8170% year-over-year in August 2026.[25]: That sector is one of the cleaner local landing zones for office coordinators, executive-support, and general business-admin work.
• Missouri administrative & office support employment was essentially flat year-over-year in September 2026, while active postings for the occupation were down 10.8% year-over-year.[10][11]: That usually means openings still exist, but there are fewer fresh chances per applicant than a year ago.
• National inflation and wage growth were both running at about 3.0% year-over-year, with CPI up 3.0% in August and average hourly earnings up 3.0% in September, while the federal funds rate was 3.75% and national payroll growth was only 0.3128% year-over-year.[22][23][24][21]: For Kansas City office seekers, that adds up to a steady but cost-conscious hiring backdrop where pay bumps usually need skill leverage, not just tenure.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high. There are real openings, but many entry roles are broad and attract a lot of applicants.

Best target: On-site front desk, office assistant, scheduler, dispatcher, and service-center coordinator roles at multi-location employers.

Biggest mistake: Using a generic resume that sounds clerical but does not prove speed, accuracy, and customer-facing professionalism.

Next step: Build a proof-of-execution resume with bullets on calendar handling, call volume, document accuracy, check-in flow, cash balancing, and turnaround time.

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate. Experience helps, but the market rewards scope more than years alone.

Best target: Executive-support, office-manager, team-coordinator, and cross-functional admin roles that touch budgets, meetings, vendor coordination, or reporting.

Biggest mistake: Positioning yourself as only a task-doer instead of someone who improves process and keeps teams moving.

Next step: Reframe your resume around workflow ownership, executive support, meeting logistics, reporting, and problem prevention.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate to high. You can break in, but you need a believable bridge story.

Best target: Customer-facing office roles where your prior service, retail, hospitality, education, or operations experience transfers cleanly.

Biggest mistake: Leading with industry background and hoping employers infer your office readiness.

Next step: Translate prior work into admin language: scheduling, records accuracy, customer issue resolution, cash or document controls, and software use.

Salary Reality

moderate pay broad access

Observed local wage data is moderate: the broad office and administrative support group in Kansas City had a mean wage of $24.06 per hour in May 2025, with annual pay at about $46,980 at the median, $38,480 at the 25th percentile, and $58,250 at the 75th percentile.[2][4][27][28] More recent directional signals are similar rather than richer: local posted salary ranges centered on about $40k to $56k, hourly postings centered on about $16 to $19 / hour, and Missouri's mean offered salary on new openings was ~$48,394 in September 2026 (n=971).[14][29][30]

This is moderate pay with broad access, not a high-pay niche. Kansas City's annual mean for the occupation was $50,050, slightly below the national annual mean of $51,560.[3][31]

The upside is a large local footprint—office and administrative support represented 11.3% of Kansas City employment in May 2025—but competition rises because statewide postings for the occupation were down 10.8% year-over-year and most local openings skew entry-level.[2][11][26]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in higher-trust support tracks such as executive assistant and office manager work; Robert Half's national 2027 guide puts midpoint pay at $73,000 for executive assistants and $62,000 for office managers, versus $55,000 for senior administrative assistants.[32]

Caution: Do not overread top-end numbers: Kansas City's 90th percentile wage was $71,900 in 2025, but local postings cluster much lower and employers report paying up mainly for specialized skills rather than for generic administrative experience alone.[33][14][1]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is spread across a long tail rather than dominated by one office-heavy employer. In the last 90 days, Kansas City showed more than 300 postings across more than 200 companies, and the sample was fragmented rather than concentrated.[12][18] The most-active named employers were Domino's Inc. with more than 20 postings, plus KMG Hotels and U-Haul International with around 10 each.[13] The industry mix matters more than any single employer. Local postings were most concentrated in hospitals and health care (about 20%), hospitality (about 20%), restaurants (about 15%), education (about 10%), and healthcare (about 10%), which points job seekers toward front desk, office coordinator, dispatcher, and service-admin roles embedded inside larger operating businesses.[34] Because about 20% of postings came from large employers and most roles were on-site, candidates who can commute reliably and handle customer-facing office work should have a wider target list than candidates holding out for remote-only jobs.[35][15] Hiring is also not especially fast. The typical active posting had been open around 32 days, so this is a market where steady weekly volume and follow-through matter more than one burst of applications.[36]

• Hospitals, clinics, and front-office healthcare settings (high): Hospitals and health care accounted for about 20% of local postings, making patient-facing reception and general office coordination a meaningful lane as long as you avoid specialized medical billing or coding roles that belong to a different track.[34]
• Hospitality and restaurant group offices / front desk (high): Hospitality represented about 20% of local postings and restaurants about 15%, which supports hotel front desk, guest-services admin, scheduling, and multi-site office support work.[34]
• Education and business-services offices (moderate): Education made up about 10% of local postings, and Kansas City professional and business services employment was up 0.8170% year-over-year in August 2026, which supports coordinator and office-team roles tied to operating departments.[34][25]

Where to focus: Focus first on on-site front-office and coordinator jobs inside hospitals, hospitality groups, education organizations, and multi-location service companies—not remote general admin searches.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Microsoft Office (table stakes): It was the most common named hard skill in local postings, appearing in about 25% of the sample, so lacking it is disqualifying more often than differentiating.[16]
• Microsoft Excel (differentiator): Excel and Microsoft Excel appeared in about 5%-10% of local postings, and data analysis/data literacy show up in national employer guidance as the skills that start separating stronger admin candidates from basic clerical applicants.[16][1]
• Data entry accuracy (table stakes): Data entry appeared in about 20% of local postings, making speed and accuracy one of the clearest screening tools for general office roles.[16]
• Customer service and cash handling (differentiator): Local postings often blend office tasks with service duties: cash handling showed up in about 15% of postings and customer service in about 10%.[16]
• Workflow automation and AI literacy (premium): National employer guidance increasingly points to workflow automation and AI literacy as differentiating administrative capabilities rather than nice-to-haves.[1][32]
• Project coordination (premium): Project coordination appears in national admin hiring guidance and is one of the clearest bridges from traditional assistant work into better-screened coordinator roles.[1][32]
• Business systems, CRM, and ticketing tools (differentiator): Salesforce and ticketing tools such as Zendesk, ServiceNow, and Freshdesk are now part of the national skill mix for technology-enabled administrative work, which helps candidates compete for more complex support roles.[32]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Project coordinator (both): Administrative assistants commonly move into project coordinator work as their role expands into timelines, meetings, follow-ups, and cross-team execution.[1]
• Operations support (both): Operations support is a common next step from administrative work because the daily tools overlap: scheduling, process tracking, issue handling, and handoffs.[1]
• Chief of staff (pivot): Robert Half identifies chief of staff as a stretch transition from executive assistant work when the role grows into executive partnership and business coordination.[1]
• Operations manager (pivot): Operations manager is another longer-term transition identified for experienced executive-support talent moving into broader team and process ownership.[1]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Create two resume versions: one for front-office/service-admin roles and one for coordinator/executive-support roles.
• Add proof bullets for scheduling, records accuracy, call handling, document turnaround, expense support, and problem resolution.
• Build a small portfolio with one Excel tracker, one calendar/meeting template, and one short SOP you wrote or improved.
• Prioritize employers within a realistic commute radius and stop treating remote-only filters as your primary search.

Days 31-60

• Refresh your skills stack with practical Excel, document formatting, inbox triage, and CRM or ticketing-system practice.
• Target sectors with repeated local demand: hospitals front office, hospitality groups, education offices, and multi-site service businesses.
• Prepare interview stories around interruption handling, confidentiality, customer de-escalation, and process cleanup.
• If response rates stay weak, widen title targets to coordinator, dispatcher, office operations, and service-admin roles.

Days 61-90

• Pivot harder toward project coordination or operations-support titles if general admin response remains slow.
• Negotiate around scope, schedule, and promotion path—not only base pay—when offers come in.
• Use references strategically by asking former supervisors to confirm reliability, judgment, accuracy, and professionalism.
• Audit your search funnel and cut low-yield titles or remote-only applications that are not matching this market.

Methodology and Confidence

This September 2026 report was generated on October 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: September 2026. Latest direct Kansas City, MO-KS data: September 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: High. Based on recent direct local occupation data and supporting local evidence.

Limitations

• Local wage benchmarks for this category come from May 2025 occupational wage data, so they are useful for level-setting but not a live quote for September 2026 offers.[2][3][4]
• Several August 2026 metro and state labor-market year-over-year changes are preliminary and may be revised, including unemployment, employment, and labor-force changes.[5][6][7][8][9]
• Statewide occupation-level trend data was used as a proxy where metro-specific occupation trend series are not published, so Missouri posting and employment changes may not line up perfectly with Kansas City itself.[10][11]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so it is better for spotting leading employers, common skills, work arrangements, and salary bands than for exact market totals or exact share estimates.[12][13][14][15][16]
• This report covers broad administrative and office support work; related tracks such as medical billing, payroll, warehouse clerks, and HR assistants are intentionally excluded, so some neighboring openings will not appear here.

References

1. Robert Half. Administrative career paths, skills and job search strategies for 2026 · 2026-06 · roberthalf.com
2. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Kansas City — May 2025 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-08 · bls.gov
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
5. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
6. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
7. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
8. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
9. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
10. Reveliolabs. Employment — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
11. Reveliolabs. Job Openings — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
12. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
13. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
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15. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
16. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
17. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
18. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
19. 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
20. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
21. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
22. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average · 2026-08 · fred.stlouisfed.org
23. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
24. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Federal Funds Effective Rate · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
25. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
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. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
30. Reveliolabs. Salaries — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
31. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
32. Robert Half. 2027 Administrative and customer support salary trends: The skills and roles driving growth · 2027-12 · roberthalf.com
33. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
34. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
35. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
36. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai

Live Openings in This Market

This report is published monthly; its companion page tracks the active Administrative & Office Support openings in Kansas City, MO-KS from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Administrative & Office Support openings in Kansas City, MO-KS.