Is now a good time to look for a job in Philadelphia?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: balanced | Confidence: High

Philadelphia is a usable but selective job market right now. Metro nonfarm payrolls reached 3,127,900 in August 2026, up 25,700 jobs, or 0.8%, from a year earlier, while the unemployment rate was 4.4%, down from 5.4% a year earlier.[20] That local payroll growth is better than the national pace of 0.3128% year over year, but the gains are concentrated in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, education and health services, financial activities, and manufacturing, while information, trade/transportation/utilities, and construction all lost ground.[35][12][5][1][9][15][17][18][19] A statewide proxy from Revelio Public Labor Statistics also shows Pennsylvania employment essentially flat and active postings down 4.2% year over year in September 2026, which suggests employers still have openings but are hiring carefully.[27][28]

Best positioned: Candidates who are open to on-site work and can target hospitals, universities, business services, finance, manufacturing, or hospitality employers have the best odds right now.[50][1][5][9][15][12][25]

Main caution: Do not confuse a large number of openings with an easy market: only about 5% of postings are remote, and the Information sector is shrinking locally.[25][17]

What Changed Recently

• Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington added 25,700 nonfarm jobs year over year through August 2026, a 0.8% gain, taking payrolls to 3,127,900.[20]: That is better than the U.S. payroll growth rate, so this is not a frozen market. But it still rewards people who aim at the right sectors instead of searching broadly.
• Job growth is being carried by Leisure and Hospitality (+2.6676%), Professional and Business Services (+1.7308%), Education and Health Services (+1.4508%), Financial Activities (+0.7930%), and Manufacturing (+0.5627%), while Information (-3.6609%), Trade, Transportation, and Utilities (-1.0946%), and Construction (-1.0031%) are shrinking locally.[12][5][1][9][15][17][18][19]: This means the market is not equally good for every job seeker. Your odds improve fast if you pivot toward the expanding supersectors.
• The metro unemployment rate was 4.4% in August 2026, down 1.0 percentage point from August 2025, while the labor force rose 1.4844% year over year.[20][51]: More people are in the market and more of them are working, which is healthy overall but still leaves real competition for each opening.
• The local posting picture is active but not loose: the Callings.ai job database observed more than 50,500 postings across more than 7,900 companies over the last 90 days, while Pennsylvania active postings were down 4.2% year over year in September 2026 in Revelio Public Labor Statistics.[23][28]: You should read this as plenty of openings, but tighter employer demand than the raw posting count alone might suggest.
• National inflation rose 3.0% year over year in August 2026, and average hourly earnings rose 3.0% year over year in September 2026.[36][37]: For Philadelphia job seekers, that means nominal pay may feel less generous than it looks, so total compensation, commute, and schedule matter more in negotiations.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate to hard. There are many entry openings, but they skew on-site and cluster in service, support, healthcare, retail, and operations roles rather than remote office work.[40][25][50]

Best target: Aim first at hospitals, universities, retail operations, food service, and city hiring pipelines, where demand is broader and employers hire in volume.[2][50][43]

Biggest mistake: Filtering for remote-only roles. About 85% of the local posting sample is on-site and about 5% is remote.[25]

Next step: Build one resume for frontline/customer operations roles and one for office support roles, then use PA CareerLink or the City Employer Job Fair to get in front of recruiters.[42][43]

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Moderate. The best momentum is in professional and business services, education and health services, and financial activities, but employers want clear evidence of execution, not just years of experience.[5][1][9]

Best target: Target roles where you can prove throughput, staffing, budgeting, inventory, vendor coordination, or project ownership.

Biggest mistake: Searching only for the same job title in the same industry instead of repositioning your experience for a growing sector.

Next step: Rewrite your resume around measurable outcomes and emphasize project management, Microsoft Office, customer operations, and process improvement examples because those skills recur across the local posting sample.[26]

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Harder, but feasible if you switch through sectors with broad hiring ladders instead of trying to break directly into a shrinking niche.

Best target: Use bridge sectors first: education and health services support roles, leisure and hospitality supervision, business services operations, or manufacturing training pathways.[1][12][5][16]

Biggest mistake: Trying to switch through Information just because it sounds higher-paying, even as the sector is contracting locally.[17]

Next step: Pick one target sector, show transferable proof in customer service, inventory, scheduling, or project work, and add at least one screening signal such as a valid driver's license where relevant.[26][44]

Salary Reality

high pay highly concentrated

The strongest direct benchmark is BLS all-occupation wage data for the metro: the annual mean was $71,730, the median was $54,310, the 25th percentile was $37,440, the 75th percentile was $84,780, and the 90th percentile was $130,280; BLS also reported an average hourly wage of $34.49.[4][3][46][47][48][8] Posted-pay proxies sit higher: salary-listed openings in the Callings.ai sample center on about $82k to $120k, hourly-paid postings center on about $19 to $23 / hour, and Revelio Public Labor Statistics puts the mean offered salary on new Pennsylvania openings at about $61,769 in September 2026 (n=21,015).[49][14][29]

Philadelphia can pay well, but it is really two markets at once: a broad middle around the metro median and a narrower, degree-heavy professional slice that lifts advertised salary bands.

The easiest-to-enter roles are more often on-site and hourly. The better-paid roles tend to sit behind tighter screens, more specialization, or licensed/managerial requirements.

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in Financial Activities, Information, and Professional and Business Services. National average hourly earnings in September 2026 were $49.75 in Financial Activities, $56.08 in Information, and $46.03 in Professional and Business Services, all above Philadelphia's broad $34.49 hourly benchmark.[11][45][7][8]

Caution: Do not treat the about $82k to $120k posted-pay center as the typical Philadelphia salary across all work. Posted salary samples overrepresent salaried professional jobs, while the metro's actual all-occupation median is $54,310.[49][3]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity is concentrated in institutions that hire at scale. Education and Health Services is the metro's largest supersector at 748.2 thousand jobs and grew 1.4508% year over year in August 2026.[1] Philadelphia Works reported 49,244 unique job postings in Philadelphia in Q2 2026, with universities and hospitals leading demand and staffing agencies ranking second by industry.[2] In the Callings.ai job database sample, hospitals and health care account for about 25% of postings, healthcare about 20%, education about 10%, and financial services about 5%.[50] The second concentration is office and operations-heavy work tied to Professional and Business Services and Financial Activities. Professional and Business Services employed 499.6 thousand people locally and grew 1.7308% year over year, while Financial Activities employed 228.8 thousand and grew 0.7930%.[5][9] By contrast, Information fell 3.6609% year over year and Trade, Transportation, and Utilities fell 1.0946%, so tech/media-style searches and some logistics-adjacent searches are materially tougher than the metro headline numbers imply.[17][18]

• Education and Health Services (high): Largest local supersector and still growing. Best fit for clinical support, administration, patient services, campus operations, and back-office roles.[1][2]
• Professional and Business Services (high): Broad office, operations, staffing, and project-based hiring. This is one of the cleaner adjacent moves for mid-career candidates.[5]
• Financial Activities (moderate): Smaller than health and business services, but still adding jobs locally and often paying above the metro average.[9][11][8]
• Leisure and Hospitality (moderate): Fast local growth and lower barriers to entry, especially for food, beverage, and supervisory roles.[12][13]
• Information (limited): Higher pay potential, but the sector is shrinking locally, so it is a tougher place to break in or wait out a narrow title search.[17][45]

Where to focus: Prioritize on-site employers in education/health, business services, finance, and selective hospitality before chasing remote-only openings or narrow information-sector titles.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Inventory management (table stakes): It is the most-requested hard skill in the local posting sample at about 10%, which makes it useful across retail, healthcare operations, warehousing, and facilities roles.[26]
• Customer service (table stakes): It shows up across about 5% of postings and travels well into hospitals, universities, retail, hospitality, and office support jobs.[26]
• Microsoft Office (table stakes): Microsoft Office appears in about 5% of local postings and is still a common screening requirement for administrative, coordinator, and operations work.[26]
• Project management (differentiator): Project management appears in about 5% of postings and helps candidates bridge into business services, healthcare administration, and finance-adjacent roles.[26]
• Valid driver's license (differentiator): It is the most common explicit certification-style requirement in the local sample, even though it appears in less than 5% of postings.[44]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Education and Health Services (bridge): This is Philadelphia's largest supersector and it is still growing locally, with hospitals and universities leading job demand in recent posting data.[1][2]
• Professional and Business Services (bridge): Local employment is up 1.7308% year over year, and the sector is growing faster here than it is nationally.[5][6]
• Financial Activities (pivot): Financial Activities is still adding jobs locally even as the national sector is down year over year, which makes Philadelphia relatively stronger here.[9][10]
• Leisure and Hospitality (bridge): It is one of the fastest-growing local supersectors, and current hiring signals include a Philadelphia job fair with cooks, bartenders, servers, managers, and other food-and-beverage openings.[12][13]
• Manufacturing (pivot): Manufacturing is still growing modestly locally, and a South Philadelphia training pathway is being used to prepare residents for full-time plant roles.[15][16]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Re-rank your target sectors toward Education and Health Services, Professional and Business Services, Financial Activities, Manufacturing, and Leisure and Hospitality, and away from Information if you need speed.[1][5][9][15][12][17]
• Build two resumes: one for bachelor's-screened office roles and one for frontline/hourly roles. Among postings that state an education requirement, about 40% ask for a bachelor's degree, about 20% a high school diploma, and about 15% a high school diploma or equivalent.[41]
• Use the new West Philadelphia PA CareerLink location and attend the City Employer Job Fair on October 28 to get recruiter access faster than cold applying alone.[42][43]
• Rewrite bullets to foreground inventory management, customer service, Microsoft Office, and project management because those are the most common cross-sector skills in the local posting sample.[26]

Days 31-60

• Build a repeat-employer list and follow it weekly. Recent heavy posters include Jefferson Health, Jefferson Health Plans, Penn Medicine, Cooper University Health Care, Upenn, CVS Health Corporation, and Domino's Inc.[24]
• If you are open to manufacturing or operations, pursue the DrinkPAK pathway or similar industrial openings; the current local training cohort feeds roles starting at $25 an hour plus benefits.[16]
• Stop using a remote-only filter. About 85% of postings are on-site, about 10% hybrid, and about 5% remote.[25]
• If your response rate is weak, create a sector-specific version of your resume for hospitals/universities and another for business-services or finance employers rather than reusing one generic file.

Days 61-90

• If you still are not getting traction in your first-choice field, pivot deliberately into an adjacent supersector with growth: Education and Health Services, Professional and Business Services, Financial Activities, Leisure and Hospitality, or Manufacturing.[1][5][9][12][15]
• Add one screening signal that reduces friction for local employers, such as a valid driver's license for mobile roles or concrete project/operations proof for office roles.[44][26]
• Use live market contact points, not just applications: city hiring events, PA CareerLink, and employer fairs are all active parts of the local search infrastructure right now.[43][42][13]
• Reassess compensation targets using the local median of $54,310 as your reality check, then stretch upward only when you are targeting finance, professional/business services, information, or specialized licensed work.[3][11][7][45]

Methodology and Confidence

This September 2026 report was generated on October 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: October 2026. Latest direct Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD data: October 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: High. Recent metro labor data, local posting patterns, and statewide proxy signals broadly point in the same direction.

Limitations

• This all-industries view hides crosscurrents inside the Philadelphia market: education and health services, professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, finance, and manufacturing added jobs, while information, trade/transportation/utilities, and construction lost jobs, so the separate Philadelphia industry reports are the better guide if you already know your field.[1][5][12][9][15][17][18][19]
• The latest metro employment and unemployment readings here are August 2026 figures, and some metro payroll series are not seasonally adjusted or may be revised, so month-to-month swings should be treated as provisional rather than final.[20][21][22]
• Local wage anchors come from 2025 occupational wage data, which is still the best broad benchmark for Philadelphia pay but does lag current offers and negotiating conditions.[8][4][3]
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so it is more reliable for identifying leading employers, common skills, work arrangements, and broad demand patterns than for treating exact counts or tiny share differences as market totals.[23][24][25][26]
• Statewide Revelio Public Labor Statistics was used as a proxy where metro-level Revelio measures are not published, so those indicators describe Pennsylvania as a whole rather than Philadelphia alone.[27][28][29][30]

References

1. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
2. Philaworks. Philadelphia's Quarterly Labor Market Report: 2026 Q2 - Philadelphia Works · 2026-09 · philaworks.org
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. Federal Reserve Economic Data. All Employees, Professional and Business Services · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
7. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Professional and Business Services · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
8. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wages in Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington — May 2025 : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-07 · bls.gov
9. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
10. Federal Reserve Economic Data. All Employees, Financial Activities · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
11. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Financial Activities · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
12. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
13. Phillyvoice. Rivers Casino hiring cooks, bartenders and servers at 2-day job fair · 2026-10 · phillyvoice.com
14. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
15. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
16. Phillytalks. Paid Training, $25-an-Hour Jobs: DrinkPAK’s $195M Philly Plant Opens Its Doors to Local Workers - Philly Talks · 2026-10 · phillytalks.com
17. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
18. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
19. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
20. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment (Monthly) News Release - 2026 M08 Results · 2026-09 · bls.gov
21. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
22. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov
23. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
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. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
27. Reveliolabs. Employment — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
28. Reveliolabs. Job Openings — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
29. Reveliolabs. Salaries — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
30. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-09 · reveliolabs.com
31. Pa. WARN Notices · 2026-09 · pa.gov
32. X. Philadelphia Business Journal (@PHLBizJournal) on X · 2026-09 · x.com
33. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
34. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
35. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-09 · data.bls.gov
36. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average · 2026-08 · fred.stlouisfed.org
37. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
38. Federal Reserve Economic Data. All Employees, Information · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
39. Federal Reserve Economic Data. All Employees, Private Education and Health Services · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
40. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
41. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
42. Westphillylocal. PA CareerLink® opens new West Philadelphia location on Chestnut Street · 2026-10 · westphillylocal.com
43. Phila. Explore City career resources this October | Office of Human Resources · 2026-10 · phila.gov
44. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
45. Federal Reserve Economic Data. Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Information · 2026-09 · fred.stlouisfed.org
46. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
47. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
48. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · data.bls.gov
49. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
50. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-09 · callings.ai
51. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-08 · data.bls.gov

Philadelphia job market by industry, September 2026

The latest monthly report for each industry in Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD. Postings and pay come from the Callings.ai job database (active postings over the last 90 days), hedged because the sample is partial.