Q3 2026 at a glance
Job postings climb to a one-year high as payroll growth slows
U.S. job postings stayed above every month of the past year throughout Q3, even as payroll growth slowed to just 29,000 in September. This report draws on 6.7 million job postings tracked by our JobMarketPulse platform to show where demand is really building, which roles are moving, and what the holiday season has in store.
GOVERNMENT DATA
August JOLTS data showed job openings falling 256,000 to 7.08 million, below the 7.23 million consensus, after July was revised up 64,000 to 7.34 million. The openings rate slipped to 4.3%, though openings were still up 2.3% from a year earlier. Hires held at 5.2 million and total separations at 5.1 million, with quits unchanged at 3.1 million (a 1.9% rate) and layoffs low at 1.6 million. Changes were small across industries; the only decline BLS flagged was in the openings rate at the smallest establishments, those with 1 to 9 employees. There were roughly 1.01 openings per unemployed worker, down from 1.04 three months earlier, in May.
Timing is the other constraint with government data. The BLS monthly payroll report arrives with only a short lag but, as the revisions above show, keeps getting rewritten for months afterward; the October report is due November 6. JOLTS lags further still: September data won't be released until early November, meaning the openings figures above are already a full cycle behind the posting data in the sections that follow.
JOB POSTING SUMMARY
Methodology · Daily vs. Monthly Vacancies
The monthly figures in this report count every unique vacancy that was active at any point during the month. A daily snapshot counts only the vacancies open on a given day. The two measure different things, so they differ both in level and in how fast they grow.Why the monthly number is higher. On a typical day in September 2026, about 4.5 million vacancies were open. Over the month, roughly 75,000 new vacancies appeared each day as others were filled or closed, so by month's end about 6.7 million distinct vacancies had been active. In short: monthly unique ≈ daily level + new vacancies per day × (days in month − 1).
Why the growth rates differ. Measured on the daily level, vacancies were up 2.7% year over year (average of the last week of September), about half the 5.7% growth in monthly unique vacancies. If postings stayed open as long as they did a year ago, the two rates would roughly match. The gap points to faster turnover: more new vacancies appearing each day, each staying open for a shorter time. Faster turnover produces more distinct postings each month at the same daily level, which is why monthly counts are growing faster than the daily level.
Location Breakdown
The state-level picture remained broadly positive: 44 of 51 states (including DC) posted more job vacancies than a year earlier, led by the District of Columbia (+11.5%), Minnesota (+10.6%), and Texas (+9.9%).
The leaders grew for different reasons. Texas was lifted by retail and restaurant chains such as Domino's, Pizza Hut, and H-E-B, while Minnesota was a healthcare story, led by systems including Mayo Clinic and Fairview.
Montana posted the steepest decline (−4.3%), though with about 22,000 vacancies, a handful of employers can swing its total.
| Metro | Number of Job Postings | QoQ % Change | YoY % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 307,474 | 1.7% | 4.0% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 186,413 | 2.9% | 11.6% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 184,300 | 4.9% | 7.6% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 177,751 | 1.1% | 2.0% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 165,437 | 3.0% | 11.1% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 132,762 | -1.2% | 5.7% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 132,427 | 0.1% | 8.0% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 126,731 | 2.1% | 5.8% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 118,245 | 1.0% | 1.1% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 105,741 | 1.9% | 11.3% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 99,204 | 1.4% | 2.3% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 93,795 | 3.0% | 9.4% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 82,547 | 5.5% | 11.4% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 76,857 | 1.9% | 5.8% |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 74,117 | 1.9% | 4.4% |
| Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD | 70,152 | 5.6% | 9.0% |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 69,723 | 2.4% | 7.9% |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 69,386 | 0.7% | 0.8% |
| Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX | 68,012 | 2.6% | 13.2% |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 62,425 | -5.3% | -1.1% |
Of the 77 metros with more than 15,000 vacancies, only 11 had fewer postings than a year ago. San Jose led the group in growth for the second quarter in a row, accelerating to +19.0% year over year (from +15.4% in Q2). The gains came from the core of the AI and semiconductor build-out: Apple more than doubled its postings (+105.1%), Google and Nvidia each grew about 58%, and chip-equipment makers Applied Materials (+321.6%) and KLA (+79.4%) stepped up sharply, alongside Cisco (+142.7%), Waymo (+95.2%), and AMD (+48.6%). Huntsville (+18.0%) also repeated from last quarter's leaders, joined by Boise (+16.4%), Madison (+14.1%), and Austin (+13.2%).
On the other end, Sacramento again posted the sharpest year-over-year decline at −7.6%, its second consecutive quarter at the bottom of the list. Healthcare systems Sutter Health (−11.3%) and CommonSpirit (−28.7%) pulled back, as did consumer-facing employers including Starbucks (−17.5%) and Costco (−19.8%). Florida accounted for three of the ten largest year-over-year declines: North Port-Sarasota (−5.8%), Tampa (−1.1%), and Orlando (−0.1%). Each also fell 4.5% to 5.3% from June, mirroring the state's quarterly slowdown.
Categories Breakdown
The category picture in Q3 2026 tells a clear story: demand is concentrating in technical, professional, and supply-chain roles, while the largest consumer-facing categories hold steady. Restaurants and Retail, still the two biggest categories at roughly 820,000 and 775,000 vacancies, stayed close to last year's levels: Restaurants slipped just 1.0%, a clear improvement on the 2.3% year-over-year decline in Q2, while Retail edged up 1.8%.
At the top of the growth table, Engineering pulled further ahead, up 28.4% year over year and 16.1% from June, while Information Technology rose 20.4%; both outpaced their Q2 growth. The momentum is coming from three directions. Defense and national-security contractors are hiring aggressively: Booz Allen Hamilton more than tripled its postings, and Northrop Grumman, RTX, Lockheed Martin, Leidos, L3Harris, Anduril, and Amentum all grew by more than a third, several by more than half. Big Tech keeps adding technical roles, led by Amazon, which nearly doubled its postings, alongside Apple and Google. And major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Capital One, are building out their technology teams.
Beyond these two, 11 categories grew by double digits year over year. Among the larger ones, Security led (+19.7%), followed by Business Services and Production (each +16.3%) and Transportation (+14.4%), while smaller fields such as Science, Veterinary, and Human Resources rose about 20%. Only seven categories slipped below last year's levels, most of them marginally; Insurance posted the steepest decline at −3.9%, followed by Sales and Nursing. Education dropped 23% from June as school-year hiring wound down, but held level with a year ago.
| Job Category | Number of Job Postings | QoQ % Change | YoY % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurants | 819,323 | 1.8% | -1.0% |
| Retail | 773,392 | 2.2% | 1.8% |
| Healthcare | 581,475 | -1.8% | 2.0% |
| Nursing | 522,075 | -1.5% | -1.7% |
| Business Services | 301,323 | 4.5% | 16.3% |
| Education | 290,045 | -23.0% | 0.7% |
| Sales | 261,662 | -0.2% | -2.0% |
| Maintenance | 233,753 | 2.8% | 6.9% |
| Transportation | 232,864 | 5.0% | 14.4% |
| Information Technology | 207,274 | 8.9% | 20.4% |
| Production | 179,946 | 5.0% | 16.3% |
| Warehouse | 170,151 | 8.8% | 13.6% |
| Engineering | 163,824 | 16.1% | 28.4% |
| Administrative Support | 112,330 | -2.0% | 4.3% |
| Security | 107,388 | 6.6% | 19.7% |
| Hotels | 105,879 | 4.0% | 3.1% |
| Pharmacy | 83,909 | 5.2% | 6.8% |
| Construction | 69,945 | 7.4% | 11.6% |
| Accounting | 66,073 | 46.2% | -0.5% |
| Banking | 61,648 | -5.0% | -1.7% |
| Creative | 51,865 | -2.9% | 8.7% |
| Marketing | 45,657 | 6.7% | 7.1% |
| Personal Service | 44,799 | 8.0% | -1.6% |
| Finance | 43,025 | 3.1% | 13.3% |
| Human Resources | 34,130 | 5.6% | 19.8% |
| Science | 30,938 | 1.8% | 21.3% |
| Legal | 26,743 | 3.2% | 11.6% |
| Veterinary | 26,411 | 10.3% | 20.4% |
| Dental | 23,603 | -5.2% | 6.3% |
| Insurance | 17,221 | 0.7% | -3.9% |
The collar view confirms the same shift. White-collar vacancies grew fastest, up 11.5% year over year, nearly twice their Q2 pace of 6.3%, powered by Engineering, IT, and Business Services, even as they paused slightly from June. Blue-collar demand picked up speed to +4.7% year over year and posted the strongest gain from June (+3.4%), supported by Warehouse, Transportation, and Production. Healthcare was the outlier: growth cooled to 0.8% year over year, as nursing postings declined while broader healthcare roles continued to expand.
Remote & Hybrid Jobs
Flexible work is regaining ground. Remote vacancies reached 202,161 in September 2026, up 22.0% year over year, nearly four times the growth of the overall market, lifting remote roles to 3.0% of all postings from 2.6% a year earlier. Hybrid roles are growing even faster from a smaller base: at 80,240, hybrid postings were up 69.3% year over year and 20.1% from June, with more than half of that gain arriving in September alone. There are now roughly four hybrid postings for every ten remote ones, up from three a year ago.
Business Services and Information Technology, two of this quarter's fastest-growing categories overall, also have the most remote and hybrid postings. Remote Business Services postings grew by about a quarter year over year and remote IT by more than a fifth, while Sales ranked third in volume despite falling 9.2% since June. Hybrid growth was sharper still: hybrid IT postings rose 70%, and hybrid Engineering roles more than doubled, mirroring the category's overall surge.
| Job Category | Number of Vacancies | QoQ % Change | YoY % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Services | 27,639 | 2.4% | 24.7% |
| Information Technology | 24,215 | 3.9% | 22.2% |
| Sales | 15,809 | -9.2% | 17.6% |
| Job Category | Number of Vacancies | QoQ % Change | YoY % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Information Technology | 10,666 | 26.9% | 70.4% |
| Business Services | 10,015 | 17.3% | 59.9% |
| Engineering | 5,422 | 45.7% | 134.9% |
Recruiting Agencies
Staffing and recruiting agency postings surged in Q3, reaching 1.57 million in September, up 15.3% year over year, a sharp acceleration from 2.7% in Q2 and nearly three times the growth of direct-employer postings. Much of the jump came late in the quarter: September alone rose 11% from August, lifting agency postings well above their February low of 1.2 million.
Nursing is the story behind the surge. Agency nursing postings climbed to 565,793, up 64.4% year over year and by half since June, even as nursing vacancies posted directly by employers declined. Together with broader Healthcare roles (+39.8%), healthcare now makes up more than half of all agency postings, up from just under half last quarter. The leading agencies reflect the same mix: aside from generalist recruiter Gpac, the largest posters are healthcare and travel-nurse staffing firms such as Soliant Health, Medical Solutions, Nomad, and AMN Healthcare. Information Technology staffing also returned to growth (+11.5%) after declining in Q2, though it still trails the 20% pace of direct-employer IT hiring.
SALARY INSIGHTS
| Title | Q3 2025 | Q3 2026 | YoY % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trades/Manual | |||
| Maintenance Technician | $52,000 | $54,080 | 4.0% |
| Production Worker | $44,200 | $44,855 | 1.5% |
| Electrician | $72,800 | $75,182 | 3.3% |
| Service/Frontline | |||
| Retail Associate | $16.73/h | $17.18/h | 2.7% |
| Customer Service Representative | $19.06/h | $19.00/h | -0.3% |
| Cook | $17.65/h | $18.50/h | 4.8% |
| Professional | |||
| Software Developer | $145,600 | $142,501 | -2.1% |
| Project Manager | $112,507 | $113,516 | 0.9% |
| Administrative Assistant | $46,800 | $48,256 | 3.1% |
| Healthcare | |||
| Certified Nurse Assistant | $21.00/h | $22.95/h | 9.3% |
| Physician | $299,998 | $291,200 | -2.9% |
| Registered Nurse | $102,960 | $108,160 | 5.1% |
SEASONAL HIRING
Three patterns stand out (peaks cited here and below are 7-day averages). Holiday retail peaks are shrinking: the group still tops out in late October, but its high fell from about 40% above the 2024–25 average in 2023 to 26% in 2024 and 17% in 2025. UPS sets the logistics calendar: its November surge reached more than four times its typical level in 2024 but about three times in 2025, in line with its smaller seasonal hiring goals. And Halloween hiring is an eight-month affair: Spirit Halloween's postings top 10,000 by mid-March and stay above that level until late November.
Summer data (June–September 2026) offer an early read on this year's holiday hiring. Target is running 11% ahead of the same months last year and Nordstrom 24% ahead, while UPS is 22% behind, with its September postings still near the summer floor.
Holiday Retail
Logistics
Crafts & Seasonal Decor
Halloween & Winter Sports
GOOGLE FOR JOBS
Google for Jobs remains a leading entry point for job searches, and a handful of providers capture a large share of it. In Q3 2026, the top three, Indeed, LinkedIn, and ZipRecruiter, together held nearly half (47%). The race at the top stayed tight: after LinkedIn overtook Indeed in June, it narrowly kept the lead through July and August, but Indeed pulled back ahead in September at 19.7% versus 17.8%. Apply buttons that link straight to employer career sites and applicant tracking systems took about 11% on average, more than any job board outside the top two, though their share dipped to 10.2% in September from 12.0% in August.
The bigger story may be who owns those listings. Indeed, SimplyHired, and Glassdoor all belong to Japan's Recruit Holdings, which began folding Glassdoor into Indeed in 2025. Together the three held about a quarter of Google for Jobs share this quarter. Within the group, share shifted noticeably: Glassdoor fell from 4.7% in July to 1.9% in September, while Indeed and SimplyHired gained about 1.9 and 1.5 points, leaving the group's combined share nearly unchanged (26.1% to 26.7%). The pattern is consistent with Recruit consolidating its job sites, and it suggests Indeed's return to the top spot in September came largely from within its own group rather than at LinkedIn's expense.
CONCLUSION
Key Takeaways
U.S. hiring demand gained momentum in Q3 2026. Job postings reached 6.74 million in September, up 5.7% year over year, with every month of the quarter above any level seen in the prior year. The growth was broad: 44 of 51 states and 19 of the 20 largest metros posted more vacancies than a year ago. Government data paints a softer picture, with payroll gains slowing to 29,000 in September and openings easing, a reminder that more active posting does not automatically translate into net new jobs.
The mix of demand continued to shift. Engineering and IT led the market, powered by defense contractors, Big Tech, and banks, and supply-chain roles kept pace, while the largest consumer-facing categories held roughly flat. Healthcare cooled among direct employers but surged through staffing agencies, where nursing postings rose by nearly two-thirds. Flexible work regained ground, with remote postings up by more than a fifth and hybrid roles by more than two-thirds.
On pay, the median advertised full-time salary of $61,495 was up 5.6% from a year earlier but flat over the quarter, with the strongest gains in frontline healthcare and the weakest at the top of the pay scale. Salary transparency rose to 54.8%, its highest level in the past year.
Heading into Q4, the key question is whether September's pause holds through the holiday season. Early seasonal signals are mixed: Target and Nordstrom are running ahead of last year, while UPS has yet to begin its usual ramp. Last year, postings fell sharply in November; how 2026 compares will show whether this quarter's strength marks a durable shift or a high point.
ABOUT
Aspen Tech Labs, Inc.
THE DATA
Job postings in this report are sourced exclusively from direct employer career websites and are collected and updated on a daily basis. As of Q2 2026, posts from recruitment agencies are excluded from all trends unless indicated otherwise. While the dataset is not exhaustive of all job postings in the U.S., it captures a substantial share of employer hiring activity and is designed to reflect changes in hiring demand over time.
Salary data reflects advertised compensation extracted directly from job listings and may not represent final offers. Figures are normalized across hourly, weekly, monthly, and annual pay rates. Wage changes reflect aggregate trends across postings and do not imply changes within identical roles at the same employer.
Job counts represent unique active job postings per month, unless otherwise identified; where we show daily figures, they count the vacancies open on a given day (see Daily vs. Monthly Vacancies in the Job Posting Summary). Listings are deduplicated and refreshed regularly to reflect current market availability, helping ensure the data captures active hiring intent rather than reposted or stale listings. To focus on underlying job market trends, the analysis excludes employer additions or removals resulting solely from improvements to Aspen's data coverage. Because the full history is recalculated on the current employer base each quarter, figures for earlier months may differ from those published in previous editions. Quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) changes compare September with June unless otherwise noted.
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