JobMarketHealth

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

CES: Current Employment Statistics

CES, often called the payroll survey, samples businesses and government agencies each month and reports employment, hours and earnings. It is the fastest broad read on whether employers are still adding jobs.

Used in the scoreMonthly, released in the first weeks after the reference month

What it measures

  • Payroll employment counts by detailed industry
  • Average weekly hours and average hourly earnings
  • Month-over-month change, which is the headline jobs number in the news
  • National, state and metro area series for many industries

What it does not measure

Most misreadings of labor data come from asking a dataset a question it was not built to answer. These are the limits worth holding onto.

  • Occupations. CES counts jobs by industry and does not classify them by job title
  • Self-employed workers, unpaid family workers, or farm employment in the headline series
  • Whether the jobs added are entry level, senior, remote, or full time

Update cadence

Monthly, released in the first weeks after the reference month.

Occupation pages name the specific release behind each figure and when it was imported, so you can see how current a number is rather than assuming it is new. More on that on about the data.

How JobMarketHealth uses it

  • Employment and payroll momentum feed the Current Demand component alongside JOLTS.
  • CES gives the score its most recent month of movement, because it publishes earlier than the occupational sources.
  • Industry series are weighted to each occupation's industry mix rather than applied uniformly.

Where it sits

This dataset feeds the composite score. The weighting of each component is set out on the methodology page. Read the methodology.

Official source

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes Current Employment Statistics. JobMarketHealth organizes and derives from that public data and is not its publisher.

BLS notice

Statistics on this site are retrieved from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including through its public data services. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov. BLS does not sponsor or endorse JobMarketHealth, and our derivation and interpretation are our own. More in the data and career disclaimer.

BLS Current Employment Statistics

Related guides

  • Occupation vs industry job dataIndustry is who pays you. Occupation is what you do. The fastest data is by industry, the data that matches a job title is slower, and bridging them requires weighting.
  • How to tell if a job market is healthyHealthy is not the same as large or well paid. It means employers are actively adding people, separations are not spiking, and the occupation has room to keep hiring.

Ready to look at an occupation? Search occupations to see the score, wage context and outlook for a specific job.