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Oklahoma City’s Aerospace Hiring Boom and the Salary Tradeoff · The 405 Payroll

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  Ninety one thousand three hundred dollars.
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  That, that, that is the entry level baseline right now if you are stepping in as a
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  junior software engineer in central Oklahoma.
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  And, and, look, back when I was starting out in morning radio,
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  in, in these mid sized markets, management used to hit us with the classic line
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  "Well, sure, the paycheck is a bit lighter, but think about what a dollar buys you
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  here compared to coastal cities."
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  And I, I, I bought into it for a while, until I realized that a lower cost of living
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  can sometimes just be an excuse to cap your long term career upside.
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  So, let us look at what is actually happening on the ground right now.
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  Greater OKC now boasts more than 300 public and private sector aviation and
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  aerospace firms.
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  That is a massive density of defense contractors, systems integrators,
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  and commercial shops.
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  And when you look at a giant like Boeing in the area, Software Engineer compensation
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  in Oklahoma City Area at Boeing ranges from $91.3K per year for L1.
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  That is ninety one thousand three hundred bucks right out of the gate for an entry
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  level L1 role, scaling up to ninety seven thousand or more very quickly.
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  But here is where the tension comes in.
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  Just down the road, you have Tinker Air Force Base with roughly twenty six thousand
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  six hundred workers.
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  It is this gigantic civil service anchor.
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  Now, if you take a software or computer science role at Tinker,
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  you are looking at maybe ninety thousand to one hundred thirty seven thousand
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  dollars, while aircraft mechanics are making forty three thousand to sixty two
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  thousand dollars.
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  The private contractors offer that bigger upfront corporate cash,
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  but civil service gives you the bulletproof government pension and job stability.
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  Now, the common economic pitch you always hear around town is that making ninety
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  thousand in Oklahoma City feels like making one hundred sixty thousand in Seattle or
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  San Francisco.
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  But is that actually true when you look at mid career trajectory?
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  I am not so sure.
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  If you stay locked into a suppressed regional salary ceiling for ten years,
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  your base numbers stay lower.
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  If you ever want to move, or compete for national remote roles,
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  or buy into global equity markets, you are starting from a lower baseline.
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  A gallon of milk or a house might be cheaper locally, but a plane ticket,
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  a new car, or a retirement fund costs the exact same no matter where you live.
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  Now, how is the state trying to keep this engine humming?
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  Well, according to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, In 2025,
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  there were a total of 79 announcements for new and expanding companies statewide.
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  That is 79 separate project expansions promising over six thousand two hundred jobs.
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  And a huge driver behind those numbers is the state Quality Jobs Program,
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  which basically gives companies a ten year, five percent cash back rebate on their
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  gross payroll just for creating jobs here.
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  It reminds me of early performance contingent contracts I was offered in broadcast
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  media.
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  You get promised all these bonuses and future kickbacks if the station hits certain
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  metrics, but at the end of the day, you have to ask whether those guarantees
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  actually show up in the worker's weekly paycheck, or if it just subsidizes the
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  company's baseline hiring budget.
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  Are tax payer funded corporate cashbacks genuinely building sticky,
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  high wage careers, or are we just paying companies to do hiring they were going to
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  do anyway?
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  Beyond defense, you see this massive hiring demand pulling through local corporate
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  anchors too.
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  Look at health care systems like OU Health and INTEGRIS Health undergoing huge IT
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  modernizations, alongside payroll giants like Paycom and regional staples like
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  Love's Travel Stops.
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  Project managers across these sectors are pulling seventy two thousand to ninety
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  thousand dollars on average, while senior project managers are hitting one hundred
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  thirty thousand dollars plus.
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  So the demand for tech and operations talent is definitely real and spread across
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  multiple industries.
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  The question isn't whether jobs are coming in.
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  The real test is whether these regional compensation structures can keep pace as
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  national tech boundaries blur, or if workers will eventually demand that regional
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  discount myth be retired for good.
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  That is the baseline for today.
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  Talk to you next time.