Network and computer systems administrators

SOC 15-1244 · 15-0000 · Score reference month August 2026

Install, configure, and maintain an organization's local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), data communications network, operating systems, and physical and virtual servers. Perform system monitoring and verify the integrity and availability of hardware, network, and server resources and systems. Review system and application logs and verify completion of scheduled jobs, including system backups. Analyze network and server resource consumption and control user access. Install and upgrade software and maintain software licenses. May assist in network modeling, analysis, planning, and coordination between network and data communications hardware and software.

In short

The national Job Market Health score is in the Weak band for August 2026.

Job Market Health score

32/ 100
Weak

Stable

Confidence
High
Restated score
32
Methodology
v1.0
Geography
US
  • At least 90% of required inputs and occupation-industry mapping are covered.

Job Market Health scores are derived indicators based on published data, informational only, not a forecast or guarantee.

$99,130Median annual wageOEWS May 2025
13,400Projected annual openingsBLS Employment Projections 2025-2035
-4.1%Projected growth2025–2035
314,340Total employmentOEWS May 2025

Latest interpretation

What stands out for network and computer systems administrators

The clearest signals from the latest validated score, outlook and metro data.

Occupation fundamentals is the strongest component

Occupation fundamentals scores 44/100, compared with 11/100 for long-term outlook, a 33-point difference.

JobMarketHealth score components

Long-term employment is projected to contract

BLS projects 13,400 average annual openings and -4.1% employment growth from 2025 to 2035. Projected openings are a modeled annual average, not vacancies open today.

BLS Employment Projections

Largest published metro market

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ has the largest published metro employment count for network and computer systems administrators, at 17,690 jobs. The next-largest published metro is Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX with 11,740 jobs. This measures employment scale, not market quality.

BLS OEWS

Local market context

QCEW industry conditions for this occupation’s employment mix

Choose a state to see how the industries that employ this occupation are performing locally.

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How to read this section

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 network and computer systems administratorsSide-by-side published industry conditions for two or three states. There is no state-level health score; the 0 to 100 score is national.

How to read this page

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.

Job Market Health trend

Published composite score · 0–100 · by reference month

Latest published values
  • Aug 2632 / 100
View values: Job Market Health history
Job Market Health history
Reference monthScore / 100
Jan 2536
Feb 2535
Mar 2534
Apr 2535
May 2536
Jun 2534
Jul 2532
Aug 2530
Sep 2530
Oct 2529
Nov 2529
Dec 2529
Jan 2630
Feb 2630
Mar 2629
Apr 2629
May 2632
Jun 2634
Jul 2632
Aug 2632

Score components

The three published inputs behind the composite · each 0–100

Current demand33 / 100
Occupation fundamentals44 / 100
Long-term outlook11 / 100

Largest metro markets by employment

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.

Compare cities for this career →

Employment · number of jobs

  • New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ17,690
  • Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX11,740
  • Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV9,920
  • Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA8,770
  • Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN6,950
  • Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH6,760
  • Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL6,340
  • Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX6,330
  • Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA6,140
  • Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA5,530
Largest metro markets by employment
Metro areaEmploymentJobs per 1,000Median annual wage
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ17,6901.86$119,390
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX11,7402.90$103,260
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV9,9203.17$125,430
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA8,7701.40$106,290
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN6,9501.54$103,170
Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH6,7602.50$116,770
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL6,3402.25$97,180
Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX6,3301.92$101,430
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA6,1402.13$101,000
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA5,5302.65$104,440

Education & training

Typical entry requirements · BLS Employment Projections 2025-2035

Typical education
Bachelor's degree
Work experience
None
On-the-job training
None
Projected employment
310,400 jobs

Top skills

Occupation profile · O*NET 31.0 Database

  • Active Listening
  • Judgment and Decision Making
  • Systems Analysis
  • Systems Evaluation
  • Troubleshooting
  • Complex Problem Solving
  • Critical Thinking
  • Monitoring
  • Reading Comprehension
  • Operations Monitoring

Also known as: LAN Administrator (Local Area Network Administrator), LAN Specialist (Local Area Network Specialist), Network Administrator (Network Admin), Network Analyst, Network Coordinator, Network Engineer

AI & this occupation

How AI relates to Network and computer systems administrators work

Across 3 research exposure measures, Network and computer systems administrators is in the higher technical AI exposure band based on the mean of the available source-specific percentile ranks. Exposure describes how much of the work the studied AI capabilities could technically assist with; it is not a forecast of job loss.

Observed use of Claude for this occupation's tasks is in the higher third of occupations in the Anthropic Economic Index, a dated observed task-exposure benchmark, not conversation share or the share of workers using AI. Its observation window is not recorded in this saved release.

JobMarketHealth has not measured an AI effect on this occupation's employment or wages, and these figures do not enter its scores; there is no clear evidence of displacement in the data shown here.

Technical AI exposureHigher exposureMean of 3 available source-specific percentile ranks (4 measures checked); fixed exposure bands, not a national rank of the composite
Dated Claude task exposureHigher thirdObserved task-exposure benchmark 0.337; observation window not recorded
Business AI use (BTOS Core)24.6%U.S. businesses using AI, two weeks ending 2026-10-04; all industries, not this occupation
Historical task mix (2025)Not enough tasksFewer than 3 observed tasks
Measured labor-market effectNot estimatedJobMarketHealth does not attribute employment or wage changes to AI

Exposure measures (kept separate)

  • GPTs are GPTs exposure (β, GPT-4 rated): 0.73 of 1, national percentile 96 (higher third)
  • Microsoft AI applicability: 0.25 of 1, national percentile 81 (higher third)
  • OECD AI Capability Gap (lower gap = higher potential exposure): gap 2.3 of 23, national percentile 66 (middle third)
OECD capability gap by domain

As published by the OECD: the gap between what the occupation demands (0-5) and current AI capability in each domain. A lower gap means AI is closer to the requirement (higher potential exposure); 0 means AI already meets it or the domain is not relevant.

  • Language: gap 0.00 (demand 3.00 of 5)
  • Social interaction: gap 0.60 (demand 2.60 of 5)
  • Problem solving: gap 1.25 (demand 3.25 of 5)
  • Creativity: gap 0.00 (demand 2.00 of 5)
  • Metacognition & critical thinking: gap 1.15 (demand 3.15 of 5)
  • Knowledge, learning & memory: gap 0.45 (demand 3.45 of 5)
  • Vision: gap 0.00 (demand 1.15 of 5)
  • Manipulation: gap 0.00 (demand 1.70 of 5)
  • Robotic intelligence: gap 0.00 (demand 0.90 of 5)

National context: what businesses used generative AI for

From the Census 2025-26 BTOS AI Supplement (all industries; businesses whose employees used generative AI). Census did not measure Network and computer systems administrators specifically.

  • Writing or editing documents, emails, or communications: 85.4%
  • Searching for information or technical help: 49.9%
  • Interpreting, analyzing, translating, or summarizing documents: 44.6%
  • Information processing, paperwork, or filing: 34.7%

Exposure and observed usage are separate measures and neither equals job loss. Census BTOS figures are business-level surveys and are not occupation-specific. Sources: GPTs are GPTs occupation exposure; Microsoft Working with AI: AI applicability; OECD AI Exposure Measure (AI Capability Gap); Anthropic Economic Index; Census BTOS Core AI Use; Census BTOS AI Supplement 2025-26. These figures do not affect Job Market Health scores. Explore AI & Jobs · How we use AI data.

Sources and methodology

The datasets behind the figures on this page

Job Market Health score
Score for reference month August 2026 · methodology v1.0 · MethodologyScore last recalculated Oct 2, 2026 · First published Sep 29, 2026
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics
Employment, wages and largest metros · OEWS May 2025 · publisher release May 15, 2026 · About this sourceRetrieved Sep 17, 2026
BLS Employment Projections
Projected growth, openings, education and training · BLS Employment Projections 2025-2035 · publisher release Aug 27, 2026 · About this sourceRetrieved Sep 17, 2026
O*NET
Skills, alternate titles and related occupations · O*NET 31.0 Database · publisher release date not verified · About this sourceRetrieved Oct 19, 2026

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.

Related occupations

O*NET® lists these occupations as related. Each link opens the same published view of score, wages and outlook.

Evidence record

JobMarketHealth derived indicator; not a government statistic. The composite score is national and occupation level.

Occupation
Network and computer systems administrators
SOC code
15-1244
Geography
United States
Reference month
August 2026
Published Job Market Health score
32 / 100
Restated score
32 / 100
Band
Weak
Current Demand component
33 / 10050% weight
Occupation Fundamentals component
44 / 10030% weight
Long-Term Outlook component
11 / 10020% weight
Confidence
HighAt least 90% of required inputs and occupation-industry mapping are covered.
Methodology version
v1.0
Source vintage: Annual
EP-2025-2035|CPS-25b-2025|OEWS-2020-2025
Source vintage: Monthly calculated at
2026-10-02T15:32:05.097Z
First published at
Sep 29, 2026
Recalculated at
Oct 2, 2026
Canonical record URL
https://jobmarkethealth.com/occupations/network-and-computer-systems-administrators#evidence-record
Derived by
JobMarketHealth

Keep going

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.