Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in Raleigh-Cary, NC?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: High

Raleigh-Cary is still a viable market for administrative and office support, with metro unemployment at 3.1% in August 2026, total metro nonfarm employment up 2.2% year over year, and local professional and business services employment up 3.0%.[1][2][3] The category is large locally, with about 82,880 workers and 10.7% of metro employment in the office and administrative support group.[4][5] But this is not an easy market: Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows North Carolina administrative and office support postings down 14.5% year over year while statewide employment in the occupation is essentially flat, so landing a role now is more about fit and speed than broad market momentum.[6][7]

Best positioned: The best odds right now go to candidates who can work on-site, show Microsoft 365 and data-entry fluency, and handle calendar, customer-facing, or CRM-heavy work from day one.[8][9][10]

Main caution: The biggest risk is assuming these are abundant remote openings; about 90% of sampled postings are on-site and only about 5% are remote.[9]

What Changed Recently

• The metro labor market strengthened into late summer: Raleigh-Cary unemployment was 3.1% in August 2026, down year over year, while total nonfarm jobs were up 2.2% and professional and business services jobs were up 3.0%.[1][2][3]: That helps keep office-using employers active, even if the occupation itself is not expanding quickly.
• Occupation-specific demand cooled relative to last year: Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows North Carolina administrative and office support postings down 14.5% year over year, with employment in the occupation essentially flat.[6][7]: Expect fewer fresh openings per applicant than the broader local economy would suggest.
• Recent local postings skew heavily toward immediate-availability roles: about 75% of sampled openings were entry-level, about 90% were on-site, and the typical posting had been open around 26 days.[13][9][37]: Being local, interview-ready, and available for in-person work matters more than polishing a generic remote-search strategy.
• Inflation and wage growth are running neck and neck nationally, with CPI up 3.0% year over year in August 2026 and average hourly earnings up 3.0% year over year in September 2026.[35][36]: For Raleigh admin job seekers, that means ordinary offers may preserve purchasing power but not meaningfully improve it unless the role includes higher-value responsibilities or tools.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high. There are lower-seniority openings, but many are front-desk or customer-facing and move fast.

Best target: On-site coordinator, receptionist, office assistant, or service-desk roles at large local institutions and multi-site employers.

Biggest mistake: Applying only to remote admin jobs or only to generic 'administrative assistant' titles.

Next step: Rewrite your resume around speed, accuracy, calendar coverage, Microsoft Office, customer handling, and whatever scheduling or records system you've touched.

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: High unless you show clear ownership beyond clerical support.

Best target: Executive assistant, office manager, senior admin coordinator, or operations-heavy support roles.

Biggest mistake: Leading with years of service instead of measurable scope like executive support, vendor coordination, reporting, or workflow cleanup.

Next step: Build a portfolio of 3-5 concrete examples: complex calendaring, travel, reporting, process improvement, and cross-team coordination.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: High if your resume reads like a title change instead of a skills transfer.

Best target: Customer-facing admin roles in healthcare, education, hospitality, or retail support settings where transferable service and organization skills matter.

Biggest mistake: Targeting elite executive-assistant jobs before proving office systems fluency.

Next step: Get hands-on with Excel, Outlook or Google Calendar, basic CRM use, and one scheduling workflow so you can talk through real tasks in interviews.

Salary Reality

stable pay slow advancement

The firmest local benchmark is BLS: the 2025 median for Raleigh-Cary office and administrative support was about $47,310 a year, with the 25th percentile around $38,230 and the 75th percentile around $58,270.[21][22][23] A parallel BLS metro cut puts the broad group at roughly $47,200, with a mean hourly wage of $23.90.[8][5] More recent posted-pay signals are somewhat higher in the active job mix, with local postings centered on about $50k to $65k or about $16 to $19 an hour, but those figures describe current advertised openings rather than the full employed market.[24][25]

This is workable pay, not breakout pay. The local median sits close to the national median for the broad office and administrative support family rather than far above it.[22][26] The real upside usually comes from title mix and scope, not from the market paying a blanket premium.

The tradeoff is that the broad-access roles are also the easiest to standardize. North Carolina's mean offered salary on new openings for administrative and office support was about $47,970, versus about $63,996 across all occupations in the state, and local openings skew heavily on-site and entry-level.[27][13][9]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in executive assistant, senior administrative assistant, and office manager tracks, which Robert Half flagged for above-average salary growth, and executive assistant pay nationally remains well above the general admin median.[14][28]

Caution: Do not overread top-end numbers. Only a small share of local postings are senior, and top salaries usually assume executive support, process ownership, discretion with sensitive information, or specialized systems knowledge rather than general office help.[13][14]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is spread across many employers rather than dominated by one anchor. In the local job sample, hiring is fragmented, with more than 350 postings across more than 175 companies over the last 90 days.[29][11] The most active industry mix in that sample skews toward restaurants at about 30%, hospitality at about 20%, healthcare at about 15%, retail at about 15%, and education at about 5%.[16] That means a lot of visible demand is really front-desk, service coordination, and site-level office coverage rather than classic corporate back-office work. There is still a deeper office economy underneath that service mix. Raleigh-Cary professional and business services employment was 156.7 thousand in August 2026, up 3.0% year over year, and local signals also point to recurring hiring by Duke University, WakeMed, Red Hat, and North Carolina state agencies.[3][4] Those are better places to look if you want calendar management, executive support, coordination, or office-manager duties instead of cashier-adjacent reception work.

• Front desk and customer-facing office roles (high): The largest visible pool is in restaurants, hospitality, retail, and healthcare-facing settings, where employers value customer handling, scheduling, and point-of-service accuracy.[16][10]
• Institutional office support (moderate): Universities, health systems, and state agencies show up as recurring employer types, which can be better fits for candidates seeking steadier office workflows and clearer advancement ladders.[4]
• Executive assistant and office manager tracks (limited): These roles are fewer, but they align with the strongest salary-growth signals and reward higher-trust coordination, reporting, and workflow ownership.[14]
• Remote-only admin roles (limited): Very little of the local mix is remote, so this segment is structurally scarce in Raleigh-Cary right now.[9]

Where to focus: Focus first on on-site institutional or multi-site employers where the job includes scheduling, executive support, reporting, CRM, or workflow coordination instead of only front-desk coverage.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Microsoft 365 and Excel (table stakes): Local postings repeatedly ask for Microsoft Office skills, and local proxy signals also call out Microsoft 365 as a core tool, so lacking this is disqualifying for many openings.[10][8]
• Calendar management and scheduling (differentiator): Calendar management appears in local skill signals and becomes the bridge from basic clerical work into executive-support and coordinator roles.[8][14]
• Data entry and digital records tracking (table stakes): Data entry shows up across local postings, and recent market analysis also flags digital records tracking as part of the current admin toolset.[10][15]
• CRM familiarity, especially Salesforce (differentiator): Local signals specifically mention CRM familiarity such as Salesforce, which helps you compete for coordinator jobs that sit between admin support, customer communication, and pipeline tracking.[8]
• Customer service and front-desk handling (table stakes): Customer service is the most-requested hard skill in the local posting sample, which matches the area's heavy mix of restaurant, hospitality, retail, and healthcare-facing roles.[10][16]
• AI and automation proficiency (premium): National employer guidance now highlights AI literacy and workflow automation as compensation-influencing skills, and local market analysis also surfaces AI tools and prompt writing in admin postings.[14][15][17]
• Certified Administrative Professional (CAP) (differentiator): Most local postings do not require a certification, but the CAP is still one of the clearest ways to signal professional standards, and Raleigh's Wake Tech offers preparation for it.[18][19][20]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Legal assistant (both): Legal is one of the clearer neighboring tracks for strong organizers because employers in administrative hiring have highlighted legal as an opportunity pocket, and the work rewards document control, discretion, and deadline management.[38]
• Healthcare support administration (both): Healthcare is already part of the local admin mix, and education and health services continue to grow nationally, which supports patient-facing scheduling and office-coordination paths outside general admin.[16][39]
• HR coordinator or recruiting coordinator (pivot): The move works well for admins who are strong in scheduling, confidentiality, and communication, especially if they already support interviews or onboarding.
• Operations coordinator or project coordinator (both): This is the best bridge for admins who already do reporting, process cleanup, vendor follow-up, or cross-team tracking and want less pure clerical work.[14][40]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Split your resume into two versions: one for customer-facing/site admin roles and one for coordinator/executive-support roles.
• Move software and workflow terms near the top of your resume: Excel, Outlook, calendar management, data entry, records tracking, scheduling, CRM, and reporting.
• Build a target list of local employers you can physically reach for on-site work and apply within 48 hours of posting.
• Prepare short interview stories for three outcomes: handled a difficult customer, managed a scheduling conflict, and reduced errors or follow-up time.

Days 31-60

• Create one proof-of-work asset: an Excel tracker, meeting cadence template, travel checklist, or calendar SOP you can describe in interviews.
• Add one tech edge that changes your pitch, such as Salesforce basics, Google Workspace power-user skills, or an AI-assisted scheduling and email workflow.
• If you are switching careers, start CAP prep or a similar structured admin course so your resume shows current office commitment.
• Expand your title search to include office coordinator, administrative coordinator, executive assistant, legal assistant, patient scheduler, recruiting coordinator, and operations coordinator.

Days 61-90

• If response rates are weak, pivot away from generic admin titles and toward legal, healthcare support admin, HR coordinator, or operations-coordinator tracks.
• Reassess your pay targets by title family, not by one average number, because front-desk work and executive support are not paid the same way.
• Use your application data to cut dead-end segments; if remote applications are producing no screens, stop making them the center of your search.
• For final-round interviews, bring a one-page process-improvement idea tailored to the employer's office, scheduling, or communication workflow.

Methodology and Confidence

This September 2026 report was generated on October 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: September 2026. Latest direct Raleigh-Cary, NC data: September 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: High. Based on 19 direct local occupation data points and 44 total local evidence items with recent coverage.

Limitations

• Local occupation pay benchmarks for this page mostly come from 2025 wage data, so they are the best broad anchor available but they do not capture every shift in 2026 hiring mix.
• Several August 2026 local labor-market change figures are preliminary, so small year-over-year moves may be revised later.
• Statewide occupation data was used as a proxy where metro-level occupation-by-postings data was not available, so North Carolina admin trends may not match Raleigh-Cary perfectly month to month.
• This category bundles many titles together, from front-desk and customer-facing roles to executive support, so sub-role competition and pay can differ a lot inside the same headline market.
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so direction of demand, leading employer names, and skill patterns are more reliable than exact counts or exact employer shares.

References

1. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
2. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Raleigh-Cary, NC — May 2025 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-07 · bls.gov
5. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Raleigh-Cary, NC — May 2025 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-07 · bls.gov
6. Reveliolabs. Job Openings — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
7. Reveliolabs. Employment — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
8. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Raleigh, NC - May 2023 OEWS Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates · 2026-01 · bls.gov
9. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
10. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
11. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
12. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
13. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
14. Robert Half. 2027 Administrative and customer support salary trends: The skills and roles driving growth · 2026-09 · roberthalf.com
15. Callings. Admin Jobs in Raleigh: Aug 2026 Outlook | Callings.ai · 2026-08 · callings.ai
16. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
17. Abmcollege. Top 13 Administrative Assistant Skills in 2026 | ABM College · 2026-01 · abmcollege.com
18. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
19. Robert Half. Should you get an administrative certification? Here’s what you need to know · 2026-04 · roberthalf.com
20. Northwestcareercollege. Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Business Administrative Assistants' Work | NCC · 2026-09 · northwestcareercollege.edu
21. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
22. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
23. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
24. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
25. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
26. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
27. Reveliolabs. Salaries — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
28. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Table 1. National employment and wage data from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey by occupation, May 2025 - 2025 A01 Results · 2026-05 · bls.gov
29. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
30. Spectrumlocalnews. Frito-Lay to cut 65 workers in Raleigh · 2026-07 · spectrumlocalnews.com
31. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
32. Wearerevamped. Revamped | Career Strategy, Job Search & Salary Negotiation Consulting · 2026-09 · wearerevamped.com
33. Indyweek. A Year After Federal Job Cuts, Workers in the Triangle Are Still Picking Up the Pieces · 2026-05 · indyweek.com
34. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
35. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average · 2026-08 · fred.stlouisfed.org
36. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
37. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
38. Addisongroup. Administrative hiring trends and highest-paid jobs: 2026 Workforce Planning Guide · 2025-10 · addisongroup.com
39. Federal Reserve Economic Data. All Employees, Private Education and Health Services · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org

Live Openings in This Market

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