Labor Market Pulse · Information Technology · October 2026
Information Technology Labor Market Report: Sandusky, OH MSA — October 2026
Infrastructure pay climbs as support-desk pay slides in Sandusky.
Metro Systems Administrator pay rose to $93,576 and Network Engineer pay to $104,998, while Help Desk/IT Support pay fell to $48,880 amid an Ohio technician shortage of five open roles per qualified candidate.
Free archive edition. Published by WageScape as sent to subscribers; data as of October 2026.
Key indicators
- Erie County unemployment: 3.6% — vs 4.3% Sandusky County, same metro
- Ohio technician shortage: 5:1 — open roles per qualified candidate, statewide
- National tech layoffs YTD: 133,417 — already exceeds full-year 2025 total
- Metro average weekly wage: $741.94 — preliminary Oct. 2026, Ohio LMI
Key takeaways
Infrastructure pay is outrunning support-desk pay in the same metro.
Systems Administrator and Network Engineer advertised pay both moved up moderately this month while Help Desk/IT Support pay moved down, a divergence that tracks the national split between data-center-adjacent hiring and contracting entry-level support demand. Headcount plans built around flat IT support budgets may be underfunding the infrastructure tier that is actually tightening.
Ohio's technician shortfall is now a subsidized hiring decision.
JobsOhio's Technician Path program offers up to $10,000 per worker for training, but requires 1:1 employer matching, making it a cost-share arrangement. For infrastructure and network roles seeing moderate advertised pay growth, the program may lower the breakeven cost of building talent internally versus competing for scarce external hires.
Two-county unemployment split complicates a single metro hiring plan.
Erie County's 3.6% rate and Sandusky County's 4.3% rate suggest the labor pool varies in tightness across the MSA. Sourcing and remote-work policy decisions calibrated to Erie County conditions alone may overstate how competitive the broader metro labor market actually is.
Cybersecurity pay gains locally mirror a national premium story.
Metro Cybersecurity Analyst pay ($102,518) is rising moderately, consistent with national data showing IT systems and solutions wages up 4.7% year-over-year. Retention risk concentrates here first — competing offers for security talent are increasingly funded by employers chasing the same data-center and infrastructure buildout driving Ohio's broader technician demand.
Median advertised pay by role — Sandusky, OH MSA
| Role | 25th percentile | Median advertised pay | 75th percentile | Metro trend | National median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data Scientist * | $111,207 | $138,400 | $156,390 | Stable | $145,881 |
| Systems Administrator * | $74,693 | $93,576 | $104,236 | Moderate increase | $102,503 |
| Network Engineer * | $73,340 | $104,998 | $121,552 | Moderate increase | $115,757 |
| Software Engineer * | $109,020 | $148,707 | $163,905 | Stable | $154,403 |
| Help Desk/IT Support Specialist * | $40,560 | $48,880 | $54,511 | Moderate decline | $53,129 |
| Cybersecurity Analyst * | $82,532 | $102,518 | $118,918 | Moderate increase | $107,327 |
| IT Project Manager * | $88,076 | $111,411 | $124,800 | Stable | $118,150 |
* 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
Erie County's unemployment held at 3.6% in September while Sandusky County ran hotter at 4.3% in August, a split that points to uneven labor supply across the metro's two-county footprint. Statewide, Ohio's technician shortage — five open roles per qualified candidate — compounds locally for IT leaders competing against data-center and skilled-trades employers who can now draw on JobsOhio's $10,000-per-worker training subsidy, provided employers match funds dollar for dollar.
What it means
Metro advertised pay for Systems Administrator ($93,576) and Network Engineer ($104,998) is moving up at a moderate pace even as the comparable Cybersecurity Analyst line also climbs — a pattern consistent with infrastructure and security roles absorbing the wage pressure that skilled-trades competition and data-center buildout are exerting on Ohio's technician labor pool. Help Desk/IT Support pay is declining locally, which may reflect an opportunity to rebalance headcount toward tiered or outsourced support while redirecting retained budget into infrastructure and security roles where local advertised pay is outpacing national wage growth. Consider evaluating whether JobsOhio's matching-fund technician subsidy offsets enough of the cost gap to make internal upskilling competitive against external recruiting for systems and network roles.
Looking ahead
Expected: BLS metro-level employment data for October won't post until December 2 — current readings rely on county-level proxies. IT leaders benchmarking headcount plans against metro unemployment should treat September's Erie County figure as provisional until the formal release.
Emerging pressure point: TechCred's fiscal-year reimbursement budget for technology credentials has already run out, halfway through the year. Upskilling plans that assumed per-credential reimbursement may need to prioritize critical infrastructure and security roles over broader staff development.
Worth watching: National tech layoffs have exceeded 133,000 through late October, already surpassing all of 2025. Watch whether any of that displaced talent — particularly in infrastructure or cloud roles — surfaces in the Sandusky-area candidate pool given the metro's lower cost base relative to coastal tech hubs.
Potential inflection point: Sandusky County's unemployment rate sits nearly a full point above Erie County's. If that gap widens further, it may indicate labor is shifting out of manufacturing-adjacent work and into services or logistics, changing the pool available for entry-level IT support hiring.
Sources
- Ohio Department of Job & Family Services — Erie County unemployment at 3.6% in September, Sandusky County 4.3% in August
- JobsOhio — Ohio has five open technician jobs per qualified candidate
- Ohio TechCred Program — TechCred budget exhausted halfway through fiscal year
- Layoffs.fyi / tech layoff tracker — 133,417 tech employees laid off at 325 companies through Oct. 21, 2026
- Ohio Labor Market Information (LMI) — Metro average weekly wage of $741.94 in October 2026
- Bureau of Labor Statistics — BLS metro employment data for October 2026 releases December 2, 2026
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.