The U.S. labor market continued its sluggish performance in June, offering little relief after a disappointing jobs report in May. Glassdoor’s latest Job Market Report shows that, in June, job openings rose 1.4 percent and median base pay rose 1.7 percent compared to the same period last year. While continued growth is a positive sign, both figures represent a deceleration from 2018.
Annual growth in job openings during 2018 averaged 9.8 percent, but that sharply decelerated in 2019 with growth averaging just 2.2 percent up to June. Job postings grew even slower at 1.4 percent in June, resulting in 5.65 million job postings on Glassdoor. Although that’s below the April 2019 peak of 5.81 million job postings on Glassdoor, it’s still a healthy figure indicating workers remain in high demand. The figure below shows the trend in job openings on Glassdoor since January 2017 (blue line), as well as the year-over-year growth rate in job openings (green line).
Wage growth on Glassdoor flattened at 1.7 percent, with median base pay rising to $53,411 per year from a year ago. That's down from last month's downwardly revised 1.8 percent pay growth and well below the 2.5 percent average pay growth we saw in the second half of 2018. Stubbornly low pay growth continues to be a challenge for the recovery, and the recent deceleration in pay growth signals that the broader labor market slowdown is being driven more by slack in employer demand than a lack of available workers.
The figure below shows the trend in U.S. median base pay on Glassdoor since January 2017 (blue line), as well as the year-over-year growth rate in pay (green line).
What direction is this slowdown headed? Following May's disappointing jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, June's report will be watched closely for signs that the labor market slowdown is continuing. Glassdoor's latest Job Market Report suggests that the slowdown is real and here to stay.
Let’s take a closer look at growth in job openings and pay on Glassdoor in June 2019.
Local Metro Trends in Job Opening and Pay Growth
- Philadelphia leapfrogged to the top of the list of metros with the fastest growth in job openings on Glassdoor, growing at 6.3 percent year-over-year. Other mid-sized metro areas like Atlanta (+5.9 percent), Boston (+5.8 percent) and Seattle (+4.3 percent) saw strong growth in job openings. In contrast, the nation's largest metro areas like Los Angeles (-0.3 percent), New York City (+0.2 percent) and Chicago (+0.5 percent) saw stagnating growth in job openings.
- Boston sat in the sweet spot in June of strong growth in both job openings and pay. Job openings increased 5.8 percent year-over-year and median base pay grew at 2.7 percent year-over-year, both figures well-above the national average. With graduations aplenty in June, college-town Boston's abundance of new graduates are joining the labor market at a particularly favorable time.
- Tech-hub San Francisco continues to outpace the competition in terms of pay growth but fall behind in new job openings. While San Francisco recorded 3.1 percent growth in median base pay to a nationwide-high of $72,467, it saw a decline in job openings of 0.1 percent. The total number of job openings is still healthy, but the opposing trends may reflect the rising cost of living pricing out opportunities for new workers.
Below is a list of job openings and median base pay growth for all 10 U.S. metros in our June 2019
Job Market Report:
Growth in Job Openings and Pay Across 10 Major U.S. Metros
| Area |
Job Openings |
YoY % |
Median Base Pay |
YoY % |
| U.S. National |
5,646,920 |
1.4% |
$53,411 |
1.7% |
| Philadelphia |
107,288 |
6.3% |
$57,055 |
1.7% |
| Atlanta |
119,848 |
5.9% |
$54,930 |
1.8% |
| Boston |
146,152 |
5.8% |
$61,958 |
2.7% |
| Seattle |
109,322 |
4.3% |
$63,202 |
2.4% |
| Washington DC |
177,198 |
1.4% |
$61,446 |
2.1% |
| Chicago |
189,258 |
0.5% |
$57,737 |
1.7% |
| New York City |
293,049 |
0.2% |
$63,953 |
2.4% |
| San Francisco |
142,167 |
-0.1% |
$72,467 |
3.1% |
| Los Angeles |
206,780 |
-0.3% |
$62,460 |
2.5% |
| Houston |
90,858 |
-7.9% |
$56,228 |
0.7% |
Trends in Job Opening Growth
- Transportation & logistics job openings grew at a blistering 49 percent in June, faster than any other industry we track. The increase in job openings is mirrored by pay for truck drivers, which rose 4.2 percent. As increased demand for shipping from the rise of e-commerce tangles with an aging trucking workforce, demand for workers, and subsequently wages, are rising.
- Job openings in manufacturing decreased by 13.4 percent, continuing a slowdown after a strong 2018. The risks of escalating trade tensions with Mexico and China have dampened employer sentiment and hiring plans in the manufacturing industry, as reflected in several weak Fed surveys in June. Additionally, as job openings are a forward-looking indicator of employer confidence, the decline in job openings signals that the broader slowdown in manufacturing may not be over.
- Small businesses have had the largest increases in job openings, signaling strong and broad-based business confidence. On top of that, small businesses have had the most difficulty filling open roles. As the labor market tightens, small businesses may struggle to keep up with larger employers with more capacity to raise wages.
Below are lists of the industries with the fastest and slowest growth in job openings in our June 2019 Job Market Report, and growth in job openings segmented by employer size:
Top 5 Industries with Fastest Growth in Job Openings
Top 5 Industries with Slowest Growth in Job Openings
Growth in Job Openings by Employer Size
You can view the full dataset of job openings growth by industry and employer size as of June 2019 here.
Trends in Pay Growth
- Low wage jobs like restaurant cook, security officer and customer service representative have experienced the fastest pay growth in this historically tight labor market. In contrast, June marks a new record for the longest period of time without a hike in the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage. Despite the lack of federal action, many large employers like Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target are raising wages themselves in order to attract increasingly scarce workers.
- After averaging just 0.6 percent pay growth for 2018, data scientist rejoined the ranks of the jobs with the fastest growing pay. The data revolution has rapidly increased demand for workers with data skills, but pay had stagnated as businesses took stock of how to integrate new data technologies and new programs churned out a wave of entry-level data scientists. However, the recent multi-billion dollar acquisitions of Looker by Google and Tableau by Salesforce is just one signal that data has never been more important for modern businesses.
Below are the jobs with the fastest and slowest year-over-year growth in median base pay for full-time U.S. workers in June:
Top 10 Job Titles with Fastest Pay Growth
| Job Title |
Median Base Pay |
YoY % |
| Pharmacy Technician |
$31,726 |
7.7% |
| Insurance Agent |
$43,668 |
5.8% |
| Machine Operator |
$40,628 |
5.5% |
| Restaurant Cook |
$29,593 |
5.0% |
| Emergency Medical Technician |
$36,030 |
4.9% |
| Sales Representative |
$49,608 |
4.5% |
| Truck Driver |
$55,457 |
4.2% |
| Security Officer |
$36,076 |
4.0% |
| Customer Service Representative |
$38,134 |
3.8% |
| Data Scientist |
$97,637 |
3.6% |
Top 10 Job Titles with Slowest Pay Growth
| Job Title |
Median Base Pay |
YoY % |
| Maintenance Worker |
$40,973 |
-4.3% |
| Attorney |
$96,399 |
-3.0% |
| Business Development Manager |
$69,202 |
-2.6% |
| Human Resources Manager |
$69,277 |
-1.2% |
| Financial Advisor |
$53,492 |
-1.1% |
| Programmer Analyst |
$69,306 |
-1.0% |
| Pharmacist |
$126,573 |
-0.6% |
| Professor |
$86,457 |
-0.4% |
| Customer Service Manager |
$54,507 |
-0.3% |
| Claims Adjuster |
$53,529 |
-0.1% |
You can view the full dataset of median base pay and pay growth by job title as of June 2019 here.
How Does it Work?
Note: Beginning in April 2019, the Glassdoor Job Market Report launched as an expansion of what was previously known as the Local Pay Reports. The new Job Market Report will publish monthly ahead of the BLS jobs report and now includes newly available data on job openings in addition to pay data previously reported in the Local Pay Reports.
The Glassdoor Job Market Report provides a real-time view of job and hiring trends and wage growth in the U.S., including several metro areas, based on millions of online jobs and salaries on Glassdoor. As one of the world’s largest job sites, Glassdoor collects millions of job postings from a wide variety of online sources each month. In addition, Glassdoor is a leading source for real-time salary information, based on millions of crowd-sourced salary reports submitted online, voluntarily and anonymously, by current and former employees.
Leveraging the same technology behind Glassdoor’s powerful job search and Know Your Worth products, the Job Market Report applies proprietary data science and machine learning algorithms to Glassdoor data to aggregate and analyze online job openings and estimate wage growth across the nation, including in several U.S. metro areas.
By publishing and comparing month-by-month job growth and pay growth across the U.S. by metro, industry and more, the Job Market Report offers a fresh, forward-looking and more detailed perspective into how the job market and economy are changing, in relative real-time.
Read more in our full methodology and FAQs.
Monthly Jobs Report Expectations
The latest jobs report from the federal government is due out on Friday. This month, we expect to see 164,000 new jobs added to payrolls and an unemployment rate steady at 3.6 percent in June.
The Glassdoor Job Market Report can be found at: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/job-market-report/. To learn more or subscribe to receive email alerts about new research, visit: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/.
Press inquiries: To speak with the Glassdoor Economic Research team about this month’s report and for any questions regarding the newly launched Job Market Report, please email pr@glassdoor.com.