State of Boulder Labor Market [2026]

According to JobLeads data, Boulder added around 8K new positions in Q1 2026, broadly in line with Q4 2025. Specialist roles salary averaged $81,590 in Q1 2026, about a 6% drop from the $87,038 peak in Q4 2025.

Around 8,000 new positions opened in Q1 2026, broadly flat from Q4 2025

Employers in Boulder maintained a steady pace of hiring at the start of the year.

Hiring volume rose sharply through the middle of last year, peaking at 8,238 postings in Q3 2025, before cooling slightly in Q4. The rebound in Q1 2026 at a nearly 10% increase quarter-over-quarter signals that employer demand has stabilized at a higher baseline rather than continuing to climb unchecked.

A typical job ad in Boulder closes in 19 days

The median time from when a full-time job ad first appeared to when it was taken off the market was 19 days in Q1 2026. Fill times dipped to 17 days during Q4 2025, likely driven by end-of-year hiring urgency, before climbing back in Q1.

Half of all closings fell somewhere between 8 and 39 days, a wide range that points to sharply different hiring speeds depending on role type and seniority.

Management and Tech together drive nearly 40% of open positions in Boulder

Boulder's industry mix is notably more distributed than other cities in this group, with no single sector dominating.

Management is the largest source of hiring activity by a small margin, accounting for 23% of open positions in Q1 2026. Following close behind, there are Bio & Health (20%) and IT & Technology (17%). Engineering (13%) and Sales (8.43%) round out the top five sectors.

Employers advertised an average salary of $81,590 for specialist roles in Q1 2026

Advertised salaries for specialist roles in Boulder fell to $81,590 in Q1 2026, a 6.2% drop from $87,038 in Q4 2025. The decline breaks a run of relative stability — salaries had held between roughly $84,800 and $87,000 across all of 2025 — and pulls Q1 2026 pay back below where it stood a year earlier. Despite the pullback, Boulder still ranks among the highest-paying cities in this report group.

About 79% of open positions in Boulder are for specialists

Specialist-level roles make up nearly 79% of all open positions in Boulder, dwarfing every other seniority tier. Team Leader roles are a distant second at just over 10%, while Head of Department (4%), Project Manager (4%), VP (2%), and Managing Director (1%) together account for barely a tenth of postings.

How these metrics are calculated: methodology

Geography: Boulder, Colorado

Period: Q1 2025 through Q1 2026

New positions: Unique job openings that appeared for the first time in each quarter. Duplicate postings by the same employer are excluded.

Time to fill: Median number of days between a job ad's first appearance and its confirmed removal from the market. Only full-time positions are included for Q1 2026; historical quarters include all contract types due to data availability. Negative durations (pipeline timing artifacts) are excluded. The interquartile range (P25–P75) shows where the middle 50% of closings fall. Time to fill reflects how long employers kept a listing active, not necessarily how long the hiring process took internally.

Salary: Average salary advertised by employers for specialist-level roles. Only positions that included a salary figure are counted. Statistical methods are applied to remove extreme values and ensure the average reflects what most job seekers would realistically encounter.

Industries: Sectors with the most open positions. Openings without a recognised sector are excluded.

Role levels: Based on the seniority indicated in each job title.

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