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Bureau of Labor Statistics > Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages > Data > About Data

Guide to QCEW Data Sources

Download Data Files

The QCEW publication data set is vastly larger in scale than most BLS products. For example, the national Current Employment Statistics (CES) program publishes data for most of the 1,083 NAICS detailed industries for the nation. QCEW publishes every NAICS industry for the more than 3,000 counties in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as every MSA, every state, and the nation. This difference in scale translates into a data set that cannot be fully supported by the BLS publication database. Less than 10 percent of QCEW data is available via the BLS publication database. QCEW provides full data set access via the use of downloadable files.

QCEW Open Data Access

QCEW provides a collection of CSV files designed to allow third party programmers, developers, and organizations to retrieve published QCEW data in CSV format. This page provides links to QCEW CSV file documentation as well as to sample code in several languages. This resource provides access to all QCEW data for the most recent 5 years. For QCEW open data access, see https://www.bls.gov/cew/additional-resources/open-data/home.htm.

Downloadable Data File Access

QCEW data files for all periods have been reorganized using the CSV format formerly known as the QCEW beta format. CSV files are now available back to 1975. The legacy END/ENB files will continue to be produced and will be available in zipped form. The DBF files have been dropped, with their data translated into CSV format. All QCEW data files are available at www.bls.gov/cew/downloadable-data-files.htm.

Documentation Access

See www.bls.gov/cew/about-data/documentation-guide.htm for links to QCEW file layouts, title files, and SAS and Excel helper applications.

Access on County Employment and Wages Release Day

At 10 AM on County Employment and Wages release day, QCEW data as originally published in news release tables 1, 2, and 3 will be updated and available at www.bls.gov/web/cewqtr.supp.toc.htm.

For more information, see www.bls.gov/cew/notices/2017/change-in-schedule-of-the-county-employment-and-wages-news-release.htm.

Access on QCEW Full Data Update Day

At 10 AM on the day of the QCEW full data update, new and revised QCEW data will be available for the current and prior year at www.bls.gov/web/cewdat.supp.toc.htm.

After 11 AM, by the end of the day, updated QCEW data will be posted in the year-specific collection that goes back to 1975 at www.bls.gov/cew/downloadable-data-files.htm. The year-specific collection is designed to support users who are accessing the full range of QCEW history.

For more information about current and future QCEW releases, see our release calendar.

Last Modified Date: September 25, 2024