Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: Medium

This is still a real market, not a dead one: local unemployment was 4.5% in June 2026, metro nonfarm employment was up 0.6837% year over year, and Professional and Business Services employment was up 1.3285%.[34][20][16] For the occupation itself, Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows New York administrative and office support employment up 0.8% and active postings up 0.6% year over year in July 2026, while national administrative and office support postings were down 8.7%.[17][18] But landing a role is still competitive because most local openings skew entry-level and on-site, remote roles are scarce, and July brought several metro-area WARN notices tied to corporate or office-heavy employers.[13][6][21][22][23][24]

Best positioned: The best odds right now go to candidates who can work on-site, show Microsoft Office, calendar management, data entry, and customer-service strength, and present themselves as tech-comfortable rather than purely clerical.[7][8]

Main caution: The biggest mistake is assuming any office job in New York pays a blanket premium; the local occupation median was $59,680, and the strongest salary upside is concentrated in executive assistant and specialized support tracks rather than generic admin roles.[1][5]

What Changed Recently

• New York's administrative and office support market held up better than the national pattern in July 2026: statewide employment rose 0.8% year over year and active postings rose 0.6%, while national postings for the occupation fell 8.7%.[17][18]: That makes this metro one of the better big-city places to keep applying, but the growth rate is mild rather than hot.
• Metro Professional and Business Services employment reached 1,655.1 thousand in June 2026 and was up 1.3285% year over year, faster than the metro's overall nonfarm growth of 0.6837%.[16][20]: Office-intensive employers are still adding jobs, which supports continued demand for coordinators, executive support, and site-based admin roles.
• Local job composition stayed tough for flexibility: about 85% of postings were on-site, about 10% hybrid, less than 5% remote, and about 70% were entry-level.[13][6]: If you are waiting for a remote-first admin role, your search will move slower than candidates willing to work on-site.
• July brought WARN notices from Mars Wrigley Confectionery US, LLC affecting 307 workers, Verizon Corporate Resources Group LLC affecting 282, JPMorgan Chase & Co. affecting 172, and Fusion Transport LLC affecting 79.[21][22][23][24]: These are not admin-only cuts, but they raise near-term risk around corporate support teams and office-heavy employers.
• National job openings stood at 7,359 thousand in June 2026, with a 4.4% openings rate, but the hires rate was 3.4% and unchanged year over year.[25][26][27]: The U.S. market still has openings, but companies are filling seats carefully, so expect slower processes and more screening.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high. About 70% of sampled openings are entry-level, and many postings that state education requirements ask for a high school diploma or equivalent, but about 85% are on-site and many still ask for customer service, Microsoft Office, calendar management, and data-entry basics.[6][30][13][7]

Best target: Aim first at on-site administrative assistant, front-desk, and site-support roles in healthcare, food service, hospitality, retail, and education, which make up most of the local posting mix.[12]

Biggest mistake: Sending a generic resume that lists 'office skills' without concrete examples of scheduling, customer handling, document prep, and software use.

Next step: Build a one-page proof pack: one resume version for reception or front-desk work, one for back-office support, and a short skills section that names Microsoft Office, calendar management, data entry, and basic AI-tool familiarity.[7][8]

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: High if you are only targeting remote administrative assistant jobs; better if you target executive support, office operations, or coordinator roles with strategic and tech-driven tasks.[13][5]

Best target: Prioritize executive assistant, office manager, workplace coordinator, and project-support roles where discretion, cross-team communication, and workflow ownership matter more than basic clerical volume.[5][11][8]

Biggest mistake: Applying as if tenure alone is enough; in this market, senior candidates need to show systems ownership, stakeholder support, and technology fluency.

Next step: Rewrite your resume around outcomes: calendar complexity, meeting support, vendor coordination, reporting, and any automation you introduced with Microsoft 365, Teams, or workflow tools.[8]

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate if your prior work includes scheduling, customer contact, records handling, or operations support; harder if your story is generic and you are holding out for remote work.[13]

Best target: Use temp, contract, or coordinator openings as your bridge, especially in office-heavy sectors and short-duration assignments that let employers test fit quickly.[12][4]

Biggest mistake: Trying to switch on title alone instead of translating prior work into admin outputs such as response speed, calendar accuracy, document quality, and handoff discipline.

Next step: Create a short portfolio with work samples such as a meeting agenda, tracker, intake log, or spreadsheet workflow, then aim at hybrid or on-site roles before remote-only searches.

Salary Reality

high pay highly concentrated

Observed local wage data is decent but not spectacular: BLS puts the metro occupation median at $59,680, with the 25th percentile at $48,670 and the 75th percentile at $74,250 in May 2025.[1] More recent proxy signals sit a bit higher: local posted salary ranges center on about $66k to $81k, New York statewide offered salaries on new openings average about $62,306 in July 2026, and one short-term temp listing paid $25–$27 per hour.[2][3][4]

This is a market with selective upside, not universal upside. Solid pay exists, but the better bands usually show up when the job combines admin work with executive support, office operations, or higher-trust coordination.

The offset is competition and fit. Many openings are entry-level, most are on-site, and the best-paid roles usually expect discretion, calendar complexity, stakeholder management, or broader systems ownership.

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in executive assistant and specialized office-management paths; Robert Half's New York-area midpoint for executive assistant pay is $70,250, which lines up with the upper part of the local BLS range.[5][1]

Caution: Do not overread the top end of posting-based salary bands. Those figures can be pulled up by senior executive-support jobs, broader coordinator roles, or postings that choose to disclose pay, while the occupation-wide local median remains lower.[2][1][5]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is concentrated in site-based employers rather than classic headquarters-only admin pools. In the Callings.ai job database sample, there were more than 3,500 postings across more than 1,400 companies over the last 90 days, with the heaviest industry mix in food & beverage and healthcare at about 30% each, followed by hospitality and retail at about 10% each and education at about 5%.[31][12] That mix points to a lot of roles embedded in operating sites, clinics, stores, campuses, and service locations rather than purely remote back-office support. The employer base is also fragmented, which is good for resilience but bad for lazy job-search tactics. Hiring is spread across many companies rather than one dominant buyer, about 25% of postings come from large employers and about 20% from enterprise employers, and a separate live tracker still showed more than 60 active administrative assistant openings with employers including Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Figma, One Medical, Chip City, and Justworks.[29][32][33] If you want faster traction, focus on employers where administrative work is tied to daily operations, customer flow, or executive coordination instead of waiting for a pure remote clerical role.

• Site-based admin and front-office support (high): This is the deepest pool: healthcare and food & beverage each account for about 30% of sampled postings, and the common local skills are customer service, Microsoft Office, calendar management, data entry, and computer literacy.[12][7]
• Executive support and office operations (moderate): This slice is smaller but pays better. It benefits from metro Professional and Business Services growth and from employer demand for more strategic, tech-driven support work.[16][5]
• Temp and contract administrative work (moderate): Short-duration assignments are still present locally, including recent listings around $25–$27 per hour, so contract work remains a viable bridge for candidates needing a faster re-entry point.[4]

Where to focus: Focus first on on-site administrative assistant, front-desk, and office-coordinator roles in healthcare and service-heavy employers, then use that base to move into higher-paid executive or operations support.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Microsoft 365 / Office (table stakes): Microsoft Office appears among the most-requested local skills, and broader 2026 guidance still treats Microsoft 365 as core infrastructure for admin work.[7][8]
• Calendar management (table stakes): Calendar management is one of the most-requested local skills and is a reliable proxy for trust, prioritization, and executive-support readiness.[7]
• Customer service (table stakes): Customer service is tied for the top locally requested skill, which fits a market where many jobs sit in healthcare, food service, hospitality, and retail settings.[7][12]
• Data entry and computer literacy (table stakes): Both data entry and computer literacy show up repeatedly in local postings, making them basic screening criteria rather than optional extras.[7]
• Teams, Slack, Asana, Notion, and cloud collaboration (differentiator): Communication platforms and project-management tools are now part of the expected toolkit for administrative professionals, especially in more coordinated or cross-functional roles.[8]
• AI assistants and workflow automation (premium): Tools such as Copilot, ChatGPT, Power Automate, Zapier, and Make are increasingly part of administrative workflows, and employers are rewarding more strategic, tech-driven support work.[8][5]
• Certified Administrative Professional (CAP) (differentiator): CAP is built around operational excellence and leadership development, and because formal certifications are rarely hard requirements in local postings, it works best as a credibility signal rather than a gatekeeper.[10][36]
• Certified Business Office Manager (CBOM) (premium): CBOM covers office administration, workflow coordination, HR support, financial basics, and workplace efficiency, which lines up well with office-manager and operations-heavy paths.[11]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Project coordinator (both): This is a natural move if you already do scheduling, meeting support, task tracking, and documentation, especially with project-management tools like Asana or Notion.[8]
• Workplace coordinator / office operations coordinator (both): It extends office-manager-style work into facilities, vendors, and workplace operations, which maps well to the broader workflow and office administration skill set emphasized in CBOM and office-manager guidance.[11][5]
• Property management assistant (pivot): New York-area pay guidance groups property-management assistants with executive and administrative assistants, suggesting overlapping employer demand for organized, site-based support work.[5]
• Chief of staff / EA-PA hybrid (pivot): Executive-support careers are increasingly linked to chief of staff and EA/PA hybrid paths.[19]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Create two resumes: one for site-based or front-desk support and one for executive or coordinator support, because the local market splits between high-volume entry roles and narrower higher-trust roles.[6]
• Move Microsoft Office, calendar management, customer service, data entry, and computer literacy into the first third of your resume, since they are among the most-requested local skills.[7]
• Add one line showing AI-tool use with Microsoft 365, Copilot, ChatGPT, or Power Automate so you look current rather than clerical-only.[8][9]
• Set a pay floor before you apply: the local occupation's 25th percentile is $48,670, the median is $59,680, and short-term temp assignments can still show up around $25–$27 per hour.[1][4]

Days 31-60

• Start one credibility upgrade that fits your target: CAP for executive or administrative support, or CBOM for office-management and operations-heavy paths.[10][11]
• Build a mini work-sample packet with a meeting agenda, travel or calendar template, tracker, and spreadsheet example so hiring managers can see execution quality immediately.
• Apply through staffing channels as well as direct employers, because contingent admin work is still showing up locally and can bridge into permanent roles.[4]
• Target office-heavy sectors first—healthcare, food service, hospitality, retail, and education—rather than broadcasting the same application everywhere.[12]

Days 61-90

• If response rates stay weak, pivot titles from generic administrative assistant to project coordinator, workplace coordinator, property management assistant, or EA/PA-hybrid paths.
• Shift your search toward employers that support daily operations or executives, since pure remote clerical openings make up less than 5% of the local mix.[13]
• Ask in interviews what systems the team uses for scheduling, documents, collaboration, and automation; employers are rewarding more strategic, tech-driven support work.[8][5]
• Negotiate based on scope, not title alone; the best pay tends to sit in executive support and specialized office-management tracks rather than general reception work.[1][5]

Methodology and Confidence

This July 2026 report was generated on August 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: August 2026. Latest direct New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ data: July 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: Medium. The page is anchored in direct local wage and labor-market data, but some hiring, salary, and skill details come from proxy posting and research signals.

Limitations

• The strongest local wage benchmark for this occupation is the BLS May 2025 metro wage release, so current pay conditions may have shifted by the time you read this report.[1]
• Recent local context data such as metro unemployment and sector employment are from June 2026, and some year-over-year government changes are preliminary rather than final.[34][20][16]
• Statewide labor data was used as a proxy where metro-level occupation-by-month data is not published, so New York State hiring direction may not match every part of the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro.[17][18]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so it is best for spotting direction, leading employer names, work-arrangement patterns, and common skills rather than exact market totals or exact employer share.[31][29][13][7]
• This category spans very different jobs—from reception and data entry to executive support and office management—so pay and competition can vary sharply by sub-role, and companywide WARN notices do not mean every affected job is administrative.[1][21][22][23][24]

References

1. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in New York-Newark-Jersey City — May 2025 · 2026-06 · bls.gov
2. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
3. Reveliolabs. Salaries — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
4. Randstadusa. Find Office administrator Jobs in Springfield, New Jersey | Randstad USA · 2026-08 · randstadusa.com
5. Robert Half. 2026 Administrative and Customer Service Salaries and Compensation Trends · 2025-10 · roberthalf.com
6. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
7. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
8. Addisongroup. Administrative hiring trends and highest-paid jobs: 2026 Workforce Planning Guide · 2026-01 · addisongroup.com
9. Robert Half. AI for administrative assistants: Tools, skills and career growth tips · 2026-04 · roberthalf.com
10. Ucertify. Top 10 Office Productivity Certifications: Best Office Productivity Certifications 2026 · 2026-06 · ucertify.com
11. Findcourses. Certified Business Office Manager, Management and Strategy Institute · 2025-11 · findcourses.com
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. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-07 · data.bls.gov
15. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-04 · data.bls.gov
16. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
17. Reveliolabs. Employment — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
18. Reveliolabs. Job Openings — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
19. Csuiteassistants. 2026 Executive Assistant Salary Report | C-Suite Assistants · 2026-08 · csuiteassistants.com
20. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
21. Roi-nj. Home | ROI-NJ · 2026-07 · roi-nj.com
22. LinkedIn. Verizon at the breaking point: what the workforce data reveals across 3 rounds of cuts · 2026-07 · linkedin.com
23. Yahoo. Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos · 2026-07 · yahoo.com
24. Finance. Freight Distress Report: Carrier, logistics closures erase over 245 jobs · 2026-07 · finance.yahoo.com
25. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
26. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
27. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
28. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
29. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
30. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
31. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
32. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
33. Donewithwork. Administrative Assistant Jobs in New York — 60+ Jobs | DoneWithWork · 2026-08 · donewithwork.com
34. Stlouisfed. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis · 2026-07 · stlouisfed.org
35. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
36. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai

Live Openings in This Market

This report is published monthly; its companion page tracks the active Administrative & Office Support openings in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Administrative & Office Support openings in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ.