Labor Market Pulse · Information Technology · September 2026
Information Technology Labor Market Report: Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD MSA — September 2026
Philadelphia IT pay splits: security and oversight rise, infrastructure stalls.
Cybersecurity Analyst pay rose to a $103,014 metro median and IT Project Manager to $121,190, while Systems Administrator pay held flat at $97,502 against a climbing $101,168 national figure.
Free archive edition. Published by WageScape as sent to subscribers; data as of September 2026.
Key indicators
- Metro unemployment rate: 4.1% — Philadelphia MSA, July 2026, matches national rate
- Metro employment growth YoY: +139,800 jobs — Philadelphia MSA, July 2026 vs July 2025
- PA information sector jobs: -13,900 (with 3 other sectors) — Since August 2025, per Keystone Research Center
- Systems Admin pay gap: $97,502 vs $101,168 — Metro flat vs national up, moderate magnitude
Key takeaways
Systems Administrator pay is going nowhere locally while the US average climbs.
Metro median sits at $97,502 against a national figure of $101,168 and rising — a widening gap that may suggest Philadelphia-area employers face less competitive pressure to raise pay for this role, or that local demand has genuinely softened relative to the national market. Either way, retention risk builds quietly when pay stays flat against a rising national benchmark.
Cybersecurity and project management pay are moving together — watch why.
Cybersecurity Analyst ($103,014) and IT Project Manager ($121,190) both show upward, moderate movement locally, consistent with Philadelphia's finance and pharma base concentrating investment in governance, risk, and delivery oversight rather than raw technical headcount. Budget conversations should treat these roles as linked priorities, not separate line items.
Information-sector flatness masks where the real hiring is happening.
Flat information-sector employment in the Philadelphia MSA, combined with financial activities hitting a record high statewide, indicates IT hiring is increasingly happening inside finance, healthcare, and pharma employers rather than tech firms themselves. Compensation benchmarking should weight industry context, not just job title, when setting offers for in-house IT talent.
Support-tier wage compression looks structural, not temporary.
Help Desk/IT Support Specialist pay sits flat at $55,000 locally and nationally, consistent with CompTIA and Motion Recruitment data showing AI-driven compression of entry-level and commodity IT functions nationally. Current conditions suggest this is a durable shift in role value, not a cyclical dip — reallocating support budget toward security or cloud tiers may be more defensible than waiting for a rebound.
Median advertised pay by role — Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD MSA
| Role | 25th percentile | Median advertised pay | 75th percentile | Metro trend | National median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data Scientist | $121,405 | $150,945 | $166,050 | Moderate increase | $148,250 |
| Systems Administrator | $81,872 | $97,502 | $111,558 | Stable | $101,168 |
| Network Engineer | $67,336 | $112,213 | $127,997 | Stable | $114,400 |
| Software Engineer | $114,616 | $143,272 | $156,945 | Moderate increase | $153,652 |
| Help Desk/IT Support Specialist | $44,192 | $55,000 | $60,000 | Stable | $53,644 |
| Cybersecurity Analyst | $87,972 | $103,014 | $118,290 | Moderate increase | $106,790 |
| IT Project Manager | $92,235 | $121,190 | $131,086 | Moderate increase | $117,530 |
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
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington MSA unemployment held at 4.1% in July 2026, with employment up 139,800 year-over-year even as information-sector jobs stayed flat near 50,000 — a metro labor market that looks tight on paper but shows uneven hiring across tech-adjacent functions. Pennsylvania's information sector has shed jobs over the past year alongside government, construction, and trade/transportation, while financial activities and health/education carried most of the state's net growth, signaling that Cherry Hill-area IT hiring is being pulled more by adjacent industry demand (finance, healthcare) than by tech-sector expansion itself.
What it means
Flat information-sector employment paired with rising advertised pay for Cybersecurity Analyst and IT Project Manager roles locally suggests employers are not adding headcount broadly — they are reallocating budget toward security and delivery-oversight functions while commodity infrastructure roles stagnate (Systems Administrator and Network Engineer both read stable locally against national upward movement). That divergence strengthens the case for outsourcing routine infrastructure and support work while protecting permanent headcount in cybersecurity and project leadership, where Philadelphia's financial services base creates durable local demand. Consider reviewing which infrastructure functions can shift to contract or managed-service delivery before budget cycles lock in 2027 headcount plans.
Looking ahead
Worth watching: Pennsylvania's information sector has lost jobs over the past year even as financial activities hit record highs — watch whether Cherry Hill-area financial and healthcare employers absorb released tech talent into in-house IT roles over Q4.
Emerging pressure point: Pennsylvania WARN filings total 174 over 24 months affecting nearly 28,000 workers, with recent filings concentrated in logistics and manufacturing rather than tech. Monitor whether any import secondary IT or operations-support layoffs as affected firms wind down.
Expected: BLS releases official September metro-level unemployment and employment data for the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington MSA in early October — this will be the first real read on whether the 4.1% rate held or moved, and whether information-sector employment stabilized.
Potential inflection point: National tech job postings turned positive year-over-year for the first time in nearly four years (Indeed Hiring Lab, mid-September). Watch whether that national inflection shows up in Philadelphia-area postings volume for cloud, security, and infrastructure roles over the next 60 days.
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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