Current Employment Statistics Preliminary Benchmark (State and Area) Technical Note

Technical Note

This news release presents preliminary benchmark revisions to total nonfarm employment estimates from
the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 
metropolitan areas with a Census 2020 population of 1 million or more. The CES program is a federal-state
cooperative endeavor.

Each year, CES employment estimates are benchmarked to comprehensive counts of employment from the 
Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program. These counts are derived primarily from 
state unemployment insurance (UI) tax reports that nearly all employers are required to file with state
workforce agencies. While most firms are required to pay UI tax for their employees, there are some
types of employees that are exempt from UI tax law but are still within scope for the CES. Because
these employees are not included in the QCEW, CES uses several other sources to generate counts of
this noncovered employment. More information on noncovered employment is available in the CES Handbook
of Methods at www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ces/calculation.htm#noncovered-employment.

Method of calculation

Preliminary benchmark revisions are calculated for March of the current year. Noncovered employment
levels for the upcoming benchmark are not available for the release of the preliminary benchmark
revisions. Therefore, the preliminary benchmark revision is calculated by adding the previous year’s
March noncovered employment level to the current year’s March QCEW employment and subtracting the
current year’s March CES estimate of employment: Preliminary benchmark revision = (previous year
March noncovered employment + current year March QCEW employment) – current year March CES employment
estimate.

Final benchmark revisions are issued each March with the publication of the January State Employment
and Unemployment news release. For more information on the CES benchmarking process for states and
metropolitan areas, see www.bls.gov/web/laus/benchmark.htm.

Additional information

Estimates of nonfarm payroll employment, hours, and earnings from the CES program for states and
metropolitan areas are available online at www.bls.gov/sae. Historical data for preliminary and final
benchmark revisions are available for download at
www.bls.gov/sae/publications/preliminary-benchmark-announcement.htm#HistoricalData. 

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