Labor Market Pulse · Finance · September 2026
Finance Labor Market Report: Green Bay, WI MSA — September 2026
Green Bay finance hiring defies the national sector pullback.
Financial activities nationally lost 129,000 jobs since May 2025, but Green Bay's Tax Specialist and Credit Analyst advertised pay are both up significantly, signaling a metro-specific talent squeeze budget cycles need to price in separately.
Free archive edition. Published by WageScape as sent to subscribers; data as of September 2026.
Key indicators
- Green Bay MSA unemployment: 3.1% — vs 4.56% long-term metro average
- National financial activities jobs lost: 129,000 — Since May 2025, concentrated in insurance carriers
- Wisconsin Financial Activities employment forecast: -0.6% — 158.2 (2026) vs 159.1 (2025)
- National average hourly earnings growth: 3.0% y/y — Below 3.2% forecast; wage pressure easing nationally
Key takeaways
Local finance hiring is decoupled from the national sector contraction.
Financial activities nationally lost 129,000 jobs since May 2025, concentrated in insurance carriers, yet Green Bay's Controller and FP&A Manager pay remain stable-to-up. Headcount planning anchored to national finance-sector trend lines risks mispricing local retention and backfill costs.
Tax Specialist and Credit Analyst pay are moving fast for a reason.
Both roles show significant upward movement locally ($60,320 and $59,249 median), consistent with the national CPA and accountant shortage signal — a 2026 Talent Shortage Index of 77%, reversed from a 108% surplus in 2025. Budget cycles should assume these roles carry real wage inflation risk independent of broader sector softness.
Wisconsin's 'low-hire, low-fire' pattern raises retention stakes over hiring flexibility.
Statewide Financial Activities employment is forecast to decline slightly (-0.6%) from 2025 to 2026, even as unemployment sits near historic lows at 2.7%. For close and audit-readiness staffing, losing a single experienced accountant or controller may be harder to backfill than the headline unemployment rate implies.
National wage deceleration offers Finance budget relief, but not locally.
September's national average hourly earnings growth slowed to 3.0% year-over-year, below the 3.2% forecast, easing aggregate salary budget pressure. Green Bay's Senior Accountant and Financial Analyst roles are still trending up, meaning metro-level compensation budgets should not assume the same relief as national figures suggest.
Median advertised pay by role — Green Bay, WI MSA
| Role | 25th percentile | Median advertised pay | 75th percentile | Metro trend | National median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Controller | $95,151 | $101,603 | $108,199 | Stable | $113,754 |
| Senior Accountant | $69,954 | $76,381 | $76,862 | Moderate increase | $87,731 |
| Financial Analyst | $64,513 | $82,175 | $83,169 | Moderate increase | $94,782 |
| Billing Specialist | $41,106 | $47,840 | $51,071 | Significant increase | $49,512 |
| Tax Specialist | $42,516 | $60,320 | $65,275 | Significant increase | $65,842 |
| Credit Analyst | $55,350 | $59,249 | $64,218 | Significant increase | $71,758 |
| FP&A Manager * | $99,845 | $116,513 | $125,000 | Moderate increase | $128,139 |
* State-level figure shown where metro postings were too few.
WageScape's median is calibrated to correct for spurious low-value postings (reported as the 60th percentile of raw advertised pay). Download: CSV · JSON
Local market conditions
Green Bay's labor market remains structurally tight, with the metro unemployment rate at 3.1% in May 2026 against a long-term average of 4.56%, even as Brown County nonfarm employment rose to roughly 180,800 jobs through spring. Finance hiring locally diverges from the national financial activities contraction — which has shed 129,000 jobs since May 2025 — as Green Bay's manufacturing and healthcare base continues generating demand for controllers, accountants, and analysts embedded in operating units rather than standalone finance functions.
What it means
National finance sector job losses are not translating into local hiring slack — Green Bay Controller and FP&A Manager advertised pay has held stable to moderately up even as insurance and financial-activities employment contracts nationally, suggesting local demand is driven by manufacturing and healthcare finance needs rather than broader sector health. This divergence complicates headcount cost planning: budget assumptions built on national finance-sector softening may understate local retention and backfill costs for scarce credentialed roles like Tax Specialist and Senior Accountant, both showing significant upward pay movement in Green Bay. Consider reviewing budget-cycle assumptions for finance headcount against metro-specific advertised pay trends rather than national financial-activities indices, which currently point in the opposite direction.
Looking ahead
Worth watching: Watch whether Procter & Gamble's continued Plant Technician and light industrial hiring draws finance support roles (cost accounting, plant controllers) into competition with broader manufacturing wage growth in the metro.
Emerging pressure point: Finance and accounting leaders nationally report 74% plan to increase permanent headcount in H2 2026 even as the sector sheds jobs overall — watch whether this hiring intent reaches Green Bay's smaller finance talent pool and tightens Controller and Senior Accountant advertised pay further.
Early indicator: Wisconsin WARN filings are down 7% year-over-year with manufacturing historically dominant; a reversal in local manufacturing layoff activity would be an early signal of finance-adjacent cost-control hiring freezes at Green Bay employers like American Foods Group.
Potential inflection point: Track whether Wisconsin inflation continues eroding 2025's record median wage gains into Q4 — if real wage growth turns negative statewide, Finance teams may face renewed pressure to adjust merit budgets mid-cycle rather than at the next planning cycle.
Methodology
Advertised pay from active employer job postings, not survey data. WageScape's median is calibrated to correct for spurious low-value postings: distribution analysis shows roughly the lowest 10% of raw values are erroneous entries, so the reported median is the 60th percentile of raw advertised pay. WageScape observes 98% of U.S. job openings daily.
Free to read and cite with attribution to WageScape. Terms of use.