JobMarketHealth

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

QCEW: Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

QCEW is a near census of jobs covered by unemployment insurance, covering more than 95 percent of U.S. jobs. It reports employment, wages and establishment counts by industry and geography, from the nation down to counties.

Shown as contextQuarterly, released a few months after the reference quarter

What it measures

  • Monthly employment counts and quarterly averages by detailed industry
  • Total quarterly wages and average weekly wages
  • Number of establishments reporting in each industry
  • Location quotients, showing how concentrated an industry is in an area
  • National, state, metro and county geography

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 or job titles. QCEW classifies employers by industry, not workers by job
  • Job openings, hires or turnover
  • Workers outside unemployment insurance coverage, such as most self-employed people
  • Current conditions, since the newest quarter is already a few months old at publication

Update cadence

Quarterly, released a few months after the reference quarter.

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

  • QCEW powers the Local Market Context section on occupation pages, at state level.
  • Industry conditions are weighted by the published industry mix for the occupation, so the figures describe the industries that employ it, not the occupation itself.
  • QCEW is not currently part of the 0 to 100 Job Market Health score.
  • Suppressed values are left blank rather than estimated.

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 Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. 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 Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

Related guides

  • 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.
  • 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.

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