Technical Note
Scope of the survey
The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey is a semiannual survey
measuring occupational employment and wage rates for wage and salary workers in nonfarm
establishments in the United States. The OEWS data available from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) include cross-industry occupational employment and wage estimates for the
nation; states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin
Islands; and approximately 530 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and nonmetropolitan
areas. BLS also publishes national industry-specific estimates for North American Industry
Classification System (NAICS) sector, 3-digit, most 4-digit, and selected 5- and 6-digit
industry levels; and national estimates by ownership across all industries and for schools
and hospitals.
The OEWS survey is a cooperative effort between BLS and the state workforce agencies (SWAs).
BLS funds the survey and provides the procedures and technical support, while the SWAs
collect most of the data. OEWS estimates are constructed from a sample of about 1.1 million
establishments. Each year, two semiannual panels of approximately 186,000 to 189,000 sampled
establishments are contacted--one panel in May and the other in November. Responses are
obtained by Internet or other electronic means, mail, email, telephone, or personal visit.
The May 2024 estimates are based on responses from six semiannual panels collected over a
3-year period: May 2024, November 2023, May 2023, November 2022, May 2022, and November 2021.
The unweighted sampled employment of 83.5 million across all six semiannual panels represents
approximately 55 percent of total national employment. The overall national response rate
for the six panels, based on the 50 states and the District of Columbia, is 65.7 percent
based on establishments and 65.9 percent based on weighted sampled employment.
The occupational coding system
The May 2024 OEWS estimates contain approximately 830 occupational categories based on the
Office of Management and Budget’s 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system.
These occupational categories make up 22 of the 23 SOC major occupational groups. Major
group 55, Military Specific Occupations, is not included.
For more information about the SOC system, please see the BLS website at www.bls.gov/soc/.
The industry coding system
The May 2024 OEWS estimates use the 2022 NAICS. For more information about NAICS, see the
BLS website at www.bls.gov/bls/naics.htm.
The OEWS survey excludes the majority of the agricultural sector, with the exception of
logging (NAICS 113310), support activities for crop production (NAICS 1151), and support
activities for animal production (NAICS 1152). Private households (NAICS 814) are also
excluded. OEWS federal government data include the U.S. Postal Service and the federal
executive branch only. All other industries, including state and local government, are
covered by the survey.
Area definitions
The May 2024 OEWS estimates use the metropolitan area definitions in Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) Bulletin 23-01. Nonmetropolitan area definitions are specific
to the OEWS program and are set in consultation with the SWAs. For more information,
see www.bls.gov/oes/area_definitions_m2024.xlsx.
Survey sample
The OEWS survey draws its sample from state unemployment insurance (UI) files. Supplemental
sources are used for rail transportation (NAICS 4821) and Guam because they do not report to
the UI program. The OEWS survey sample is stratified by metropolitan and nonmetropolitan
area, industry, and size.
To provide the most occupational coverage, larger employers are more likely to be selected
than smaller employers. A census is taken of the executive branch of the federal government,
the U.S. Postal Service, and state government.
Concepts
Occupational employment is the estimate of total wage and salary employment in an occupation.
The OEWS survey defines employment as the number of workers who can be classified as full- or
part-time employees, including workers on paid vacations or other types of paid leave; workers
on unpaid short-term absences; salaried officers, executives, and staff members of incorporated
firms; employees temporarily assigned to other units; and employees for whom the reporting
unit is their permanent duty station, regardless of whether that unit prepares their paycheck.
The survey does not include the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms,
household workers, or unpaid family workers.
Wages for the OEWS survey are straight-time, gross pay, exclusive of premium pay. Base rate;
cost-of-living allowances; guaranteed pay; hazardous-duty pay; incentive pay, including
commissions and production bonuses; and tips are included. Excluded are overtime pay, severance
pay, shift differentials, nonproduction bonuses, employer cost for supplementary benefits,
and tuition reimbursements.
The responding establishments are instructed to report hourly rates for part-time workers and
to report annual rates for occupations that are typically paid at an annual rate but do not
work 2,080 hours per year, such as teachers, pilots, and flight attendants. Other workers,
such as some entertainment workers, are paid hourly rates, but generally do not work 40 hours
per week, year round. For these workers, only an hourly wage is reported.
OEWS receives wage rate data for the federal government, the U.S. Postal Service, and most state
government, local government, and private sector establishments. For the remaining establishments
without wage rate data, the OEWS survey data were placed into 12 wage intervals. The intervals
are defined both as hourly rates and the corresponding annual rates, where the annual rate for an
occupation is calculated by multiplying the hourly wage rate by a typical work year of 2,080 hours.
Estimation methodology
The OEWS survey is designed to produce estimates by combining six panels of data collected over
a 3-year period. Each OEWS panel contains approximately 186,000 to 189,000 establishments. The
full six-panel sample of 1.1 million establishments allows the production of estimates at detailed
levels of geography, industry, and occupation.
The May 2024 estimates were produced by a model-based estimation method using 3 years of OEWS data
(MB3). Under MB3, data provided by survey respondents are used to model occupational staffing
patterns and wages for all unobserved establishments in the population, including establishments
that were not sampled, sampled establishments that did not respond, and respondents that did not
meet stability criteria.
A donor pool typically consisting of 10 nearest neighbor responding establishments is used to
predict data for each unobserved establishment; if 10 donors are not available, then as few as
5 can be used. Donors are matched to recipients based on detailed industry, geographic area,
ownership, size, and survey panel. Within a given donor pool, donors that are more similar to the
unobserved establishment are given more weight in determining the modeled data.
Each establishment’s population employment is set as the average of its May 2024 and November 2023
employment from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), the UI database from which
the OEWS sample is drawn. Using adjustment factors derived from the OEWS survey data, wages
collected in earlier survey panels are adjusted to the reference date of the estimates and donor
wages are adjusted for differences between donor and recipient characteristics such as geographic
area and industry.
Changes and special procedures in the May 2024 estimates
With the May 2024 OEWS news release, the metropolitan area estimates have been updated to reflect
definitions based on the 2020 decennial census and delineated in OMB Bulletin 23-01. As a result of
this update, new MSAs were added to publication, some existing MSAs had name and/or compositional
changes, and other MSAs were removed from publication. Some nonmetropolitan areas were also added,
removed, or modified due to the new MSA delineations. For the six New England states, New England
City and Town Areas (NECTAs) have been discontinued, and OEWS now publishes the MSAs and nonmetropolitan
areas for these states.
On November 20, 2024, QCEW suspended publication of industry and substate data for Colorado because of
data quality concerns caused by issues with the modernization of the state’s unemployment insurance (UI)
system. Because the QCEW microdata are fundamentally a byproduct of state UI systems, QCEW data quality
is sensitive to changes in these systems. By February 19, 2025, the data quality concerns for Colorado
had been sufficiently addressed to resume QCEW publication.
OEWS uses QCEW employment data--which provide comprehensive counts of nonfarm payroll employment--to
adjust estimates to represent all employment that is in scope for the OEWS survey. The updated Colorado
employment data were not available in time to be used in this OEWS news release. As a result, data
in this news release do not include substate data for Colorado and its areas. Therefore, this news
release only contains data for about 520 metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas instead of the full
count of approximately 530 areas. The OEWS national data may be marginally impacted by the quality
issues in Colorado.
For more information
Answers to frequently asked questions about the OEWS data are available at www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm.
If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access
telecommunications relay services.
United States Department of Labor
