Blog / Job market
October 2026 job market: salaries, pay transparency, and where hiring moved
RiseMe · November 1, 20264 min read
Employers in the United States and Canada published 175,838 new job postings in October 2026, from 24,926 employers. A little over half of US postings stated a salary. The median of those salaries was $100,000. Hiring among a fixed set of tech employers was flat from September, and that flat total hid a real split: engineering, product, and AI roles fell while other employers hired more.
The figures below come from postings RiseMe collects directly from employer applicant-tracking systems. The full tables are open data, free to reuse with credit to RiseMe.
The month at a glance
- 158,616 postings in the US, 10,994 in Canada, and 6,228 remote roles that state no country.
- 15.6% remote, 15.9% hybrid, 68.4% on-site. Remote work is concentrated: 48.7% of senior data scientist postings are remote, against 6.5% of registered nurse postings.
- 55.3% of US postings state a salary. The middle half runs from $60,000 to $154,000, and 26.7% of posted salaries are $150,000 or more.
- Where a law requires a pay range in the ad, 70.6% of postings include one. Everywhere else, 41.3%.
- AI and machine learning roles are 4.2% of postings (7,389) and pay a median of $179,000.
Pay-range laws decide whether you see a salary
Every state and province that required a pay range in the job ad during October disclosed one on 65% to 81% of postings. Of the regions without that requirement, four clear 50%. The rest sit between 27% and 43%.
| Region | Pay-range law in job ads | Postings with a salary |
|---|---|---|
| Washington | Yes | 81.4% |
| Colorado | Yes | 76.6% |
| Minnesota | Yes | 75.7% |
| Massachusetts | Yes | 73.2% |
| California | Yes | 69.9% |
| New York | Yes | 68.4% |
| Ontario | Yes | 67.6% |
| Illinois | Yes | 65.0% |
| Texas | No | 37.1% |
| Florida | No | 37.8% |
| Michigan | No | 33.7% |
| Quebec | No | 27.9% |
| Louisiana | No | 27.4% |
Four regions disclose a salary on more than half of postings without a posting pay-range law: Virginia (69.6%), Connecticut (63.8%), Oregon (59.5%), and Maine (59.3%). Connecticut requires disclosure when an applicant asks, which is a different rule, so it stays in the "no law" group. The full list of 47 states and provinces is in the dataset.
The highest-paying roles
US median of salaries the employer actually posted. Staff software engineer and engineering manager tie at the top.
| Role | Median | Middle 50% | Remote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staff software engineer | $214,000 | $175k–$252k | 26.2% |
| Engineering manager | $214,000 | $174k–$252k | 24.6% |
| Senior software engineer | $203,000 | $170k–$230k | 32.6% |
| Machine learning engineer | $201,000 | $165k–$245k | 29.5% |
| Technical program manager | $190,000 | $163k–$223k | 16.6% |
| Senior product manager | $190,000 | $170k–$220k | 39.2% |
| Senior data scientist | $188,000 | $160k–$205k | 48.7% |
| AI engineer | $183,000 | $145k–$221k | 26.7% |
Pay by seniority
- Entry$60,000
- Mid$84,000
- Senior$140,000
- Lead / Manager$109,000
- Principal / Director$185,000
- VP / Executive$200,000
Lead / Manager pays less than Senior because the band includes frontline managers in retail, hospitality, and field operations, along with engineering and product leads.
Where the jobs are
On-site and hybrid postings. Remote roles are counted in the national totals and left out of a metro, because a remote job does not belong to the city on the employer's letterhead.
| Metro | Postings | Median salary | Salary posted | Hybrid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco Bay Area | 10,164 | $168,000 | 63.4% | 30.6% |
| New York City | 7,971 | $116,000 | 66.8% | 30.8% |
| Los Angeles | 6,617 | $108,000 | 74.3% | 16.5% |
| Washington D.C. | 4,802 | $127,000 | 71.2% | 25.9% |
| Dallas–Fort Worth | 4,007 | $91,000 | 39.1% | 15.9% |
| Chicago | 3,683 | $98,000 | 67.5% | 28.0% |
| Boston | 3,493 | $121,000 | 75.5% | 25.4% |
| Austin | 3,020 | $107,000 | 41.1% | 18.6% |
| Toronto | 2,991 | CA$98,000 | 63.3% | 43.4% |
| Seattle | 2,888 | $120,000 | 81.6% | 24.2% |
Toronto has the highest hybrid share of these metros, at 43.4%. Seattle posts a salary most often, at 81.6%. Dallas and Austin, with no statewide posting requirement, sit near 40%.
Visa sponsorship is rarely offered in writing
Among US engineering postings, 23.9% explicitly say the employer will not sponsor a visa, and 1.3% explicitly say it will. Most postings say nothing either way. Product is 13.5% against 1.0%. Finance is 13.3% against 0.7%. A posting that is silent is not a yes.
Hiring was flat, and the market underneath it was not
Comparing every posting we saw in September with every posting we saw in October would mostly measure which sources we added. The trend below follows 604 employers whose Greenhouse or Lever board we were already polling in early July and were still polling at the end of October. New postings per weekday:
| Month | Postings per weekday | AI/ML share | Remote | Salary posted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 2026 | 551 | 10.1% | 35.4% | 56.7% |
| August 2026 | 604 | 9.6% | 31.3% | 54.5% |
| September 2026 | 592 | 10.6% | 31.4% | 56.8% |
| October 2026 | 592 | 9.0% | 30.1% | 58.7% |
October matched September (0.0%). Under that, 282 employers posted less and 256 posted more. Engineering fell 15.4%, product 22.8%, and AI/ML roles 14.5%. Remote share in this panel fell 5.3 points from July to October. Salary disclosure rose to 58.7%.
What is counted
- New postings published in October 2026 for the United States and Canada, plus remote roles open to them. Staffing agencies and job aggregators are excluded.
- A job republished from an older posting is excluded. The same opening listed twice is counted once.
- Salaries are only ranges the employer stated. Estimates are not used. Medians are rounded to the nearest $1,000, and a figure based on too few postings is left blank in the tables.
- US salary figures are USD. Toronto and other Canadian rows are CAD.
Download the tables and the column definitions: October 2026 data and methodology. Cite it as RiseMe, October 2026 Job Market, riseme.ai/blog/october-2026-job-market.