JobMarketHealth

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

OEWS: Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics

OEWS is the wage and staffing map of the labor market. It estimates how many people work in each detailed occupation and what they are paid, nationally and for states, metro areas and industries.

Shown as contextAnnual

What it measures

  • Employment counts for roughly 800 detailed occupations
  • Hourly and annual wage percentiles, including the median and the mean
  • Jobs per thousand and location quotients, which show where an occupation is concentrated
  • Estimates by metro area and by industry

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.

  • Total compensation. OEWS wages exclude most bonuses, equity, tips in some series, and benefits
  • What a new hire will be offered today. Estimates reflect a reference period that is months old at publication
  • Wage growth for an individual worker over a career
  • Openings or hiring activity of any kind

Update cadence

Annual.

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

  • Median annual wage and metro employment are shown on occupation pages as supporting context.
  • Wages are not an input to the Job Market Health score. A high paying occupation is not automatically a healthy one.
  • Some values are suppressed or capped by BLS. Where that happens the page says the figure is not published rather than filling it in.

Where it sits

This dataset is displayed as context on occupation pages and is not an input to the score. Read the methodology.

Official source

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes Occupational Employment and Wage 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 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics

Related guides

  • How to read occupational wage dataOEWS wages are estimates for people already employed in an occupation during a past reference period. Read the median, respect the percentile spread, and never treat it as an offer.
  • How to compare local job marketsOccupational data goes local through OEWS employment and concentration. Monthly demand data mostly does not, so local comparisons need care about what is being compared.

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