Datasets / bls-qcew

BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

Quarterly employment counts and wage data at county level by 6-digit NAICS, derived from unemployment insurance records. Covers ~97% of all US jobs going back to 1975. The most granular publicly available employment dataset — updated quarterly with a 5-month lag.

bls.gov/cew quarterly Updated May 21, 2026

Latest snapshot

Rows in latest snapshot

220

Last refreshed

May 21, 2026

Cadence

quarterly

Coverage

1975–Q3 2025; national, state, MSA, county

Total records

~50M annual rows at county×NAICS×quarter

Key fields

  • area_fips
  • own_code
  • industry_code
  • agglvl_code
  • year
  • qtr
  • month1_emplvl
  • month2_emplvl
  • month3_emplvl
  • total_qtrly_wages
  • taxable_qtrly_wages
  • avg_wkly_wage
  • lq_disclosure_code
  • oty_avg_wkly_wage_chg

Use cases

  • Employment trend by industry at county level
  • Average weekly wage benchmarks by NAICS
  • Location quotient (LQ) for industry concentration
  • Year-over-year wage growth by sector
  • Identifying labor market tightness by geography

Full table, history & downloads

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