Is Administrative & Office Support a Good Job Market in Salt Lake City-Murray, UT?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: High

Salt Lake City-Murray is still generating jobs overall: metro unemployment was 3.7% in August 2026, total nonfarm employment was up 2.4869% year over year, and Professional and Business Services was up 4.3098%.[1][2][3] But administrative hiring is softer than the headline economy: Utah administrative & office support employment was down 0.7% year over year in September 2026 and active postings were down 14.4%.[4][5] You can still find openings—more than 250 postings across more than 150 companies were observed locally over the last 90 days—but most are on-site and the mix skews heavily entry-level.[6][7][8]

Best positioned: Candidates who can work on-site and show Microsoft Office, Excel, Outlook, data entry, and customer-service strength have the best odds, especially in healthcare, construction, and business-services settings.[9][7][10]

Main caution: The biggest mistake is treating this like a remote-friendly growth market; only about 5% of sampled openings are remote, and long-run national projections for many routine nonmedical admin roles are flat to declining.[7][11]

What Changed Recently

• Salt Lake City-Murray total nonfarm employment reached 861.3 thousand in August 2026, up 2.4869% year over year, while local Professional and Business Services reached 154.9 thousand and grew 4.3098%.[2][3]: The metro economy is still expanding, so employers still need office support around growing teams, client work, and day-to-day operations.
• That broader growth did not fully carry into admin-specific hiring: Revelio Public Labor Statistics shows Utah administrative & office support employment down 0.7% year over year and active postings down 14.4% in September 2026.[4][5]: This is why the market feels tighter than the headline local economy suggests.
• Local demand is still spread across a workable number of employers, with more than 250 postings across more than 150 companies over the last 90 days, and hiring described as fragmented rather than concentrated.[6][15]: A broad company list and steady application cadence matter more here than trying to break into one dominant employer.
• National unemployment was 4.2% in September 2026, while CPI inflation and average hourly earnings were both running around +3.0% year over year.[31][32][33]: The national backdrop is stable rather than recessionary, but routine office workers should not expect automatic real-pay gains just because the economy is still hiring.
• Local work arrangement remains heavily in-person: about 90% of sampled Administrative & Office Support openings were on-site, about 5% hybrid, and about 5% remote.[7]: If your search is remote-only, you are cutting yourself off from most of the actual market.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to high: there are many junior roles, but employers can be picky because the local mix is heavily entry-level.

Best target: Target on-site front desk, admin coordinator, and general office roles in healthcare, construction, retail, and hospitality, especially if you can prove Microsoft Office, Excel, data entry, and customer-service ability.[9][7][10]

Biggest mistake: Applying only to remote roles; only about 5% of sampled openings are remote.[7]

Next step: Create a short proof pack with one Excel sample, one Outlook/calendar example, and one data-entry accuracy example tied to your resume.[10]

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate: there are fewer solid roles, but employers will still pay for trust, coordination range, and executive support depth.

Best target: Aim for executive assistant, office manager, and admin coordinator roles tied to growing Professional and Business Services employers, plus larger healthcare and construction organizations.[3][9]

Biggest mistake: Using the same resume you would use for a front-desk role instead of showing calendar ownership, meeting logistics, vendor coordination, expense handling, and executive support.

Next step: Build a quantified resume version and add a signal credential such as CAP or Microsoft Office Specialist Master if your recent titles undersell your scope.[17][18]

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Competitive: local demand exists, but employers want office-ready proof, not just general potential.

Best target: Start with on-site office coordinator, receptionist, or front-desk roles where high school or equivalent is commonly acceptable and tool fluency matters more than a perfect title match.[7][26][10]

Biggest mistake: Jumping straight to executive-assistant postings without proof of calendar management, written communication, and attention to detail.

Next step: Translate prior retail, hospitality, or service work into scheduling, customer service, data-entry, and Microsoft Office evidence; then add basic AI workflow literacy because more than one-third of entry-level jobs now require some AI competency.[10][21]

Salary Reality

moderate pay broad access

Observed local government wage data for the broad office and administrative support group shows a 2025 metro median of $46,870, a 25th percentile of $39,050, a 75th percentile of $58,370, and a mean of $50,610; the broad-group mean hourly wage was $24.33.[22][23][20][24][12] Current local posting data is directionally similar: advertised salaries center on about $50k to $62k, hourly roles center on about $18 to $22 / hour, and Utah's mean offered salary on new openings was ~$46,745 in September 2026 (n=372).[16][25][13]

This is moderate-pay office work, not premium white-collar pay. The broad local office-support mean of $24.33 per hour sits well below the Salt Lake City-Murray all-occupations mean of $34.45 per hour.[12]

The upside is that many roles do not require a bachelor's degree and the local mix is heavily entry-level, but that access comes with lower pay ceilings, more on-site expectations, and more employer selectivity for routine tasks.[8][26][7]

Best-paying path: The best pay tends to sit in executive-assistant-level and higher-responsibility coordination work. Nationally, executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants had a $76,590 median wage and $79,140 mean in May 2025, while the local 90th percentile for the broad office-support group was $73,990.[27][28]

Caution: Do not overread top-end numbers: the Salt Lake City wage release reports only broad occupational-group figures, not title-specific local pay for executive assistants, administrative assistants, office managers, or receptionists, and posted pay bands come from a partial online sample rather than the full market.[12][16]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Opportunity is spread across many employers rather than concentrated in one dominant buyer. The local sample shows more than 250 postings across more than 150 companies over the last 90 days, and hiring is described as fragmented; UTN is the most consistently active named employer in the sample with more than 30 postings.[6][14][15] That matters because networking into one company is less useful here than building a search list across healthcare systems, contractors, retailers, hospitality firms, universities, and business-services employers. Industry mix points to where the real volume sits. Hospitals and health care account for about 20% of sampled postings, construction about 15%, healthcare about 15%, retail about 10%, and hospitality about 10%.[9] Meanwhile, metro Professional and Business Services employment is up 4.3098% year over year, which supports demand for office coordinators, executive assistants, and client-facing admin roles tied to growing firms.[3] The weak spot is remote-first generalist work. About 90% of local postings are on-site, only about 5% are hybrid, and about 5% are remote.[7] If you are only applying to remote administrative assistant jobs, you are searching the thinnest slice of the market.

• Healthcare and patient-facing offices (high): Hospitals and health care plus healthcare make up roughly about 35% of sampled local admin postings, favoring front desk, intake, scheduling, and general office roles rather than medical billing or coding.[9]
• Construction and field-office coordination (moderate): Construction accounts for about 15% of sampled postings, making it a useful niche for permits, vendor communication, document control, and dispatch-adjacent office work.[9]
• Professional and business services / executive support (high): Professional and Business Services employment in the metro reached 154.9 thousand in August 2026 and was up 4.3098% year over year, supporting office manager, admin coordinator, and executive-support openings at growing firms.[3]
• Remote-first generalist admin (limited): Only about 5% of sampled openings are remote, so this slice exists but is thin and likely oversubscribed.[7]

Where to focus: Prioritize on-site coordinator, front desk, and executive-support roles in healthcare, construction offices, and professional/business services, and treat remote-only applications as a side bet.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Microsoft Office / Office Suite (table stakes): It is the most commonly cited tool family in local postings, with Microsoft Office around 20% and Microsoft Office Suite around 10%.[10]
• Excel and Outlook fluency (table stakes): Excel, Microsoft Excel, and Outlook all show up repeatedly in local postings, which means employers expect spreadsheet and email/calendar competency without much training.[10]
• Data entry accuracy (table stakes): Data entry appears in about 15% of local postings and is one of the fastest ways to make a non-admin background look relevant.[10]
• Customer service (differentiator): Customer service shows up in about 10% of local postings, which fits a market concentrated in front-desk and client-facing office roles across healthcare, retail, and hospitality.[10][9]
• AI workflow literacy (differentiator): More than one-third of entry-level jobs now require some level of AI competency, and common administrative tools now include Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Notion AI, Zapier AI, and Otter.ai.[21][19]
• Data analysis with AI tools (premium): Organizations increasingly want admins who can interpret AI-generated reports and dashboards instead of only handling routine tasks.[21]
• Certified Administrative Professional (CAP) (differentiator): CAP remains a recognized administrative credential and helps signal seriousness when your title history is mixed or indirect.[17]
• Microsoft Office Specialist Master (differentiator): MOS Master is a clean way to prove real Office proficiency in a market that still screens heavily for Microsoft tools.[18][10]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Healthcare support administrator (both): Hospitals and health care plus healthcare account for roughly about 35% of sampled local admin postings, so patient-facing scheduling and intake roles are a logical next step if you can learn clinic workflows.[9]
• HR or recruiting coordinator (pivot): The move uses the same strengths—scheduling, document handling, communication, and follow-up—but shifts you into a more specialized people-operations track.
• Accounts payable or payroll support (pivot): If your admin work includes invoices, reconciliation, or spreadsheet detail, finance-support roles are a close neighbor.
• Project coordinator (both): Growing business-services employers still need meeting logistics, follow-ups, and documentation support, which overlaps with strong admin work.[3]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Rewrite your resume into two versions: an entry/on-site admin version and an executive-support version, each leading with Microsoft Office, Excel, Outlook, data entry, and customer service if you can prove them.[10]
• Build a local target list around healthcare, construction, and business-services employers, because those sectors account for most of the sampled admin demand.[9]
• Stop filtering for remote-only roles; only about 5% of sampled openings are remote and about 5% are hybrid.[7]
• Prepare a 10-minute skills demo for interviews: calendar scheduling, Excel cleanup, Outlook inbox triage, and document formatting.[10]

Days 31-60

• Add one credential with signaling value—Microsoft Office Specialist Master or CAP—if you lack direct recent admin tenure.[17][18]
• Learn one repeatable AI workflow for office work using tools such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Notion AI, Zapier AI, or Otter.ai, then show how you use it without sacrificing accuracy.[19]
• Apply to at least one adjacent path each week—healthcare support admin, HR/recruiting coordination, finance/accounting support, or project coordination—to widen the funnel.
• Ask about schedule expectations early in every process; about 90% of local roles are on-site.[7]

Days 61-90

• If response rates stay weak, shift from generic administrative assistant titles toward office manager, executive assistant, admin coordinator, or industry-specific coordinator roles.
• Build a small portfolio with three artifacts: a meeting brief, an expense-tracking sheet, and a process checklist improved with Excel or AI assistance.
• Target growing employer types instead of only famous brands; local hiring is fragmented across employers, so a broad company list beats a narrow dream-employer strategy.[15]
• Negotiate inside realistic bands: local postings center on about $50k to $62k, while the broad metro median is $46,870.[16][20]

Methodology and Confidence

This September 2026 report was generated on October 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: October 2026. Latest direct Salt Lake City-Murray, UT data: September 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: High. Based on 24 direct local occupation data points and 48 total local evidence items with recent coverage.

Limitations

• The strongest local wage benchmark is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' broad office and administrative support group for May 2025, so current title-by-title Salt Lake City pay for executive assistants, receptionists, and office managers may differ from the figures shown here.[12]
• Administrative & Office Support covers several different local job types, and the local government release does not break out Salt Lake City wages for the representative titles individually.[12]
• Statewide occupation data from Revelio Public Labor Statistics was used as a proxy for metro-level administrative hiring direction because it is more specific than national data but still does not isolate Salt Lake City-Murray.[4][5][13]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so demand direction, leading employer names, and skill patterns are more reliable than exact counts or exact employer-share percentages in this market.[6][14][15][9][16][7][8][10]
• Some recent local unemployment and labor-force estimates may later be revised, so short-term month-to-month changes should be read as directional rather than final.

References

1. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Unemployment Rate in Salt Lake City, UT (MSA) · 2026-08 · fred.stlouisfed.org
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. Reveliolabs. Employment — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
5. Reveliolabs. Job Openings — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
6. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
7. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
8. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
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. 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
12. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Salt Lake City-Murray — May 2025 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-08 · bls.gov
13. Reveliolabs. Salaries — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
14. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
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. Zippia. Get the job you really want - Zippia · 2025-01 · zippia.com
18. Upskillist. Best courses for executive assistants in 2026 · 2025-11 · upskillist.com
19. Signinapp. 10 Best AI Tools for Administrative Tasks in 2026 | Sign In App · 2026-09 · signinapp.com
20. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
21. Campus. AI Skills Employers Want in 2026: Top 5 to Learn · 2026-07 · campus.edu
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. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
25. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
26. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
27. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages News Release - 2025 A01 Results · 2026-05 · bls.gov
28. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
29. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
30. Cityweekly. SLC’s new library director says change is overdue. The libra... · 2026-09 · cityweekly.net
31. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Unemployment Rate · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
32. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average · 2026-08 · fred.stlouisfed.org
33. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private · 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 Salt Lake City-Murray, UT from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Administrative & Office Support openings in Salt Lake City-Murray, UT.