SOC 13-1020 · 13-0000 · Score reference month September 2026
The national Job Market Health score is in the Balanced band for September 2026.
Job Market Health score
Stable
Job Market Health scores are derived indicators based on published data, informational only, not a forecast or guarantee.
Latest interpretation
The clearest signals from the latest validated score, outlook and metro data.
Long-term outlook scores 73/100, compared with 45/100 for current demand, a 28-point difference.
JobMarketHealth score componentsBLS projects 47,200 average annual openings and +6.0% employment growth from 2025 to 2035. Projected openings are a modeled annual average, not vacancies open today.
BLS Employment ProjectionsNew York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ has the largest published metro employment count for buyers and purchasing agents, at 29,360 jobs. The next-largest published metro is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA with 18,270 jobs. This measures employment scale, not market quality.
BLS OEWSQCEW industry conditions for this occupation’s employment mix
Choose a state to see how the industries that employ this occupation are performing locally.
Choose a state above to explore its available industry context.
QCEW measures employment and wages by industry, not by occupation. We weight those industry conditions using the published industry mix for this occupation. These figures describe the industries that employ this occupation; they are not direct counts of people working in the occupation or jobs currently open.
Source: BLS QCEW. This section is not part of the national 0 to 100 Job Market Health score. See the methodology.
Compare states for buyers and purchasing agentsSide-by-side published industry conditions for two or three states. There is no state-level health score; the 0 to 100 score is national.
The score is a national composite from 0 to 100 that weights near term hiring demand at 50 percent, the occupation's own employment fundamentals at 30 percent, and long-term outlook at 20 percent. Wages and occupation profile details are context shown alongside it, not score inputs. See the full methodology.
Median annual wage and metro employment come from BLS OEWS, which is annual. Projected annual openings and projected growth come from BLS Employment Projections and describe the published projection horizon, so they are not a count of jobs open today. Values shown as not published are suppressed by the source rather than filled in here.
Published composite score · 0–100 · by reference month
| Reference month | Score / 100 |
|---|---|
| Jan 25 | 52 |
| Feb 25 | 51 |
| Mar 25 | 51 |
| Apr 25 | 51 |
| May 25 | 51 |
| Jun 25 | 50 |
| Jul 25 | 49 |
| Aug 25 | 48 |
| Sep 25 | 49 |
| Oct 25 | 49 |
| Nov 25 | 50 |
| Dec 25 | 50 |
| Jan 26 | 51 |
| Feb 26 | 52 |
| Mar 26 | 53 |
| Apr 26 | 54 |
| May 26 | 57 |
| Jun 26 | 58 |
| Jul 26 | 57 |
| Aug 26 | 57 |
| Sep 26 | 57 |
The three published inputs behind the composite · each 0–100
OEWS employment count, where the jobs are, not a quality ranking
OEWS May 2025. These occupation counts describe the survey reference period.
Linked metro names open overall job-market profiles.
| Metro area | Employment | Jobs per 1,000 | Median annual wage |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 29,360 | 3.09 | $83,350 |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 18,270 | 2.91 | $82,500 |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 14,260 | 3.16 | $78,510 |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 14,240 | 4.54 | $104,880 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 14,160 | 3.50 | $79,420 |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 10,880 | 3.31 | $76,290 |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 10,450 | 3.62 | $75,140 |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 10,090 | 3.73 | $93,010 |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 9,960 | 4.77 | $95,970 |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 9,170 | 3.17 | $81,470 |
Typical entry requirements · BLS Employment Projections 2025-2035
Occupation profile · O*NET 31.0 Database
O*NET skills are not available in this published occupation profile. Other figures on this page use their separately listed sources.
The datasets behind the figures on this page
Values marked “Not published” are suppressed or not published by the source. We leave them blank rather than estimating them. Pipeline status for every source is on Data Status.
JobMarketHealth derived indicator; not a government statistic. The composite score is national and occupation level.
MethodologyBLS JOLTSBLS CESBLS Employment ProjectionsHow to citeNational Job Market Health release, August 2026
Learn how to judge a market from these numbers in how to tell if a job market is healthy, or why projected growth and annual openings often disagree in projected growth vs projected annual openings. Coverage, revisions and limits are explained on about the data.
The datasets behind these figures, and what each one can and cannot show, are set out on data sources.