Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Occupational Requirements Survey for 2021

This page provides information on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic for the 2021 Occupational Requirements news release.

Collection mode

Data for the Occupational Requirements Survey are collected by BLS field economists contacting establishment respondents. Respondents may provide information through personal visits, phone, email, electronic file transmission, fax, mail, and video calls. Field economists discontinued personal visits in mid-March 2020 and relied on the other data collection methods.

Response rates

The first sample in the second wave was collected between September 2018 and August 2019, and the second sample was collected between August 2019 and July 2020. The third sample was collected between August 2020 and July 2021. The response rate for data collected from the three samples was 62.3 percent.

Measures of reliability

To help users evaluate the reliability of estimates for the Occupational Requirements Survey, standard errors are available. All published estimates and standard errors are also available through the data retrieval tool and Excel dataset (XLSX).

Changes to methods

There were no changes to estimation methods for the 2021 Occupational Requirements Survey news release. Benchmarking by occupational group was done using May 2020 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data. Benchmarking by establishment size and geographic area was performed using December 2020 Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data. Benchmarking by industry was conducted using June 2021 (third closing) data from the Current Employment Statistics.

Last Modified Date: November 18, 2021