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Oklahoma City’s Hidden Hiring Boom · The 405 Payroll

• 0:13
  If you, if you pulled up a public job board in Oklahoma City this morning expecting
• 0:18
  to see a flood of new listings, you, uh, you probably noticed something strange.
• 0:24
  Public postings across the metro are sitting virtually flat compared to an eight
• 0:29
  percent rise nationally.
• 0:31
  And if you are out there scrolling at six in the morning, coffee in hand,
• 0:35
  trying to find your next move, that silence feels pretty terrifying.
• 0:40
  I, I remember back when I was hosting morning radio, whenever the station owners
• 0:45
  were about to make a huge hiring push or shuffle the lineup,
• 0:49
  the job boards were, like, totally dead.
• 0:51
  Not a single listing.
• 0:53
  Then boom, six new people walk into the studio on Monday morning.
• 0:58
  And that is kind of what is happening across the four zero five right now.
• 1:02
  The public boards look frozen, but under the hood, the numbers tell a completely
• 1:08
  different story.
• 1:09
  Oklahoma City added six thousand six hundred nonfarm jobs in 2025,
• 1:14
  and forecasts show nearly four thousand five hundred new roles landing in 2026.
• 1:19
  So, where, where are those jobs actually coming from if they are not popping up on
• 1:25
  the usual job boards?
• 1:27
  Well, it is not general office work or traditional retail trade,
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  those stay pretty quiet.
• 1:34
  The real action is happening in targeted sectors like health services,
• 1:39
  financial activities, and nonresidential construction.
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  In fact, nonresidential construction value growth is projected to jump by twelve
• 1:47
  percent in 2026 alone.
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  That is a massive surge in ground level, physical building activity.
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  The reason you are not seeing all these openings plastered on public sites comes
• 1:59
  down to what you might call stealth recruitment.
• 2:02
  When your local unemployment rate is hovering at a super tight three point two
• 2:06
  percent, employers know that putting up a generic public post just brings in a stack
• 2:11
  of hundreds of unqualified resumes.
• 2:15
  Instead, companies are bypassing those open job boards entirely.
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  They are going straight to specialized workforce pipelines,
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  targeted recruitment agencies, and direct talent networks to filter for real,
• 2:27
  qualified skill sets before anyone else even knows the position exists.
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  Now, if you look at the investment side, this strategy is tied to some serious money
• 2:37
  coming into the metro.
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  Chamber assisted expansion projects, one hundred and thirteen of them,
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  brought in four point four five billion dollars in total investment.
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  And those projects are set to create more than 3,400 jobs, with an average annual
• 2:52
  salary of approximately $60,700.
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  That sixty thousand seven hundred dollar benchmark sounds incredible on paper,
• 3:01
  right?
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  But, um, when you break down the wage rate realities on the ground,
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  the gap between tiers gets pretty stark.
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  Your entry level wage baseline in the area sits around eight dollars and fifty three
• 3:13
  cents an hour.
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  A forklift driver is earning roughly sixteen dollars and nineteen cents an hour.
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  But once you move into skilled technical tiers, the floor jumps fast.
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  We are talking thirty two dollars and seventy five cents an hour for computer
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  programmers, thirty two dollars and twenty two cents for accountants,
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  and twenty eight dollars and seventeen cents for registered nurses.
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  And that is where the real local tension lies.
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  Persistent sub four percent unemployment forces employers to pay high wage premiums
• 3:45
  when they need specialized talent right now.
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  But with overall job growth projected at a moderate zero point six percent,
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  there is a steep, steep hurdle for lower wage workers who want to jump up into those
• 3:57
  higher paying tiers.
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  If you are making sixteen dollars an hour driving a forklift,
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  you cannot just apply online and land that thirty two dollar accounting or tech role
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  without dedicated, targeted retraining.
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  So, what is the big takeaway here?
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  The economic story in Oklahoma City is no longer just about raw job volume.
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  It is about speed and access.
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  The real question for 2026 is whether local workers can get into specialized
• 4:26
  workforce training programs fast enough to snap up those high wage roles before out
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  of state talent comes in and fills them first.
• 4:34
  Something to think about next time you refresh that job board.
• 4:38
  That is all for today, catch you next time.