Labor Market Pulse · Information Technology · September 2026
Information Technology Labor Market Report: Kokomo, IN MSA — September 2026
Kokomo IT pay outpaces state growth as manufacturing volatility persists
Help Desk pay in Kokomo climbed to $57,200 against a flat national $53,644, even as metro unemployment holds near 5.5% amid tariff-driven manufacturing uncertainty.
Free archive edition. Published by WageScape as sent to subscribers; data as of September 2026.
Key indicators
- Kokomo MSA unemployment rate: 5.5% — vs 4.1% national, 3.3% Indiana statewide
- Kokomo avg hourly earnings growth: 10.6% — YoY Apr 2025–Apr 2026, highest of IN metros
- Indiana tech workforce share: 3.85% — vs 5.8% national tech employment share
- Indiana statewide unemployment: 3.3% — Lowest since May 2023, 3rd straight month
Key takeaways
Help desk pay is moving like a specialized role, not a commodity one.
Metro median advertised pay for Help Desk/IT Support hit $57,200, up significantly and now running ahead of the stable national figure of $53,644. That inversion suggests local employers are competing hard for entry-tier IT talent, possibly as manufacturing operations absorb support staff into plant-floor technology roles tied to the StarPlus buildout.
Systems Administrator pay is stable locally, but that stability may be fragile.
Metro median sits at $85,780, already above the national median of $101,168 on a cost-adjusted basis and showing no movement this month. Flat local pay alongside rising national demand for infrastructure specialists is consistent with a role at risk of quiet wage compression once remote competition intensifies.
Cybersecurity remains the metro's structural hiring bottleneck.
Advertised pay for Cybersecurity Analyst rose moderately to $91,478 locally, yet Indiana ranks cybersecurity as its hardest role to fill statewide. Current conditions suggest retention investment and internal upskilling pipelines will outperform external recruiting for this function in the near term.
Data Scientist pay growth signals thin local supply, not strong local demand.
Metro median jumped to $73,394 on significant growth, but remains less than half the national median of $148,250. Gap of this size appears to reflect a scarce local candidate pool rather than a cooling national market, reinforcing Indiana's broader misalignment between tech workforce share (3.85%) and national tech employment share (5.8%).
Median advertised pay by role — Kokomo, IN MSA
| Role | 25th percentile | Median advertised pay | 75th percentile | Metro trend | National median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data Scientist | $73,394 | $73,394 | $73,453 | Significant increase | $148,250 |
| Systems Administrator * | $70,059 | $85,780 | $94,535 | Stable | $101,168 |
| Network Engineer * | $76,252 | $110,000 | $124,800 | Significant increase | $114,400 |
| Software Engineer * | $103,063 | $140,580 | $156,856 | Significant increase | $153,652 |
| Help Desk/IT Support Specialist | $53,006 | $57,200 | $58,999 | Significant increase | $53,644 |
| Cybersecurity Analyst * | $75,903 | $91,478 | $99,347 | Moderate increase | $106,790 |
| IT Project Manager * | $92,584 | $114,590 | $123,652 | Moderate increase | $117,530 |
* 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
Kokomo's manufacturing base — still close to a quarter of regional employment — remains exposed to tariff uncertainty and the loss of EV tax credits, keeping unemployment elevated near 5.5% even as earnings growth outpaces every other Indiana metro at 10.6% year-over-year. StarPlus Energy's $6 billion EV investment is adding jobs and wage pressure from the plant floor outward, pulling technical and support compensation higher even as the broader manufacturing employment picture stays volatile.
What it means
Wage growth this strong in a metro this small signals that Kokomo's tight pockets of specialized talent — IT support embedded in manufacturing operations, cybersecurity staff protecting industrial systems — are being bid up locally even as statewide hiring difficulty for cybersecurity sits at the top of Indiana's hardest-to-fill list. Build-vs-buy tradeoffs favor retaining on-prem infrastructure and support talent locally, where Indiana's wage discount still holds, while treating cloud-native and security specializations as national hires competing against metro-area and remote offers alike. Consider reviewing whether current compensation bands for security and cloud-adjacent roles reflect national rather than metro benchmarks, given how thin the local specialized talent pool appears to be.
Looking ahead
Worth watching: StarPlus Energy's second plant, expected in 2027, will continue drawing technical and support labor from the same regional pool competing for IT and infrastructure talent. Watch whether advertised pay for on-prem support roles accelerates further as plant-adjacent technology hiring intensifies.
Emerging pressure point: Indiana's EV and manufacturing sector faces continued tariff and policy uncertainty following the removal of EV tax credits. A downturn in manufacturing hiring could release adjacent IT support talent into the local market, temporarily easing the tight support-specialist labor pool.
Early indicator: Statewide employers are described as becoming more selective in hiring even amid tightness, which may extend to Kokomo's IT functions. Watch whether time-to-fill lengthens for cloud and security roles as employers hold out for precise skill matches rather than relaxing requirements.
Potential inflection point: National WARN activity includes large employers like Amazon, Meta, and Oracle, while Indiana's own 2026 WARN filings already total 3,646 affected workers. Any additional Indiana manufacturing WARN notice near Kokomo could shift local IT support supply meaningfully given the metro's small labor base.
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.
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