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Federal-state cooperative programs in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will not adopt the delineations included in Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Bulletin No. 18-04, nor any subsequent changes to the 2010 Census-based delineations, due to the workload and data implications associated with substantial changes to the metropolitan and micropolitan areas. Data implications include sample compositional changes, a delay in some seasonally adjusted data, and reduced comparability of some data series. The next metropolitan and micropolitan area changes to be adopted by the federal-state programs will be the first issuance of 2020 Census-based delineations, which BLS expects OMB to issue in 2023.
The federal-state programs include the Current Employment Statistics (CES), the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS), the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES), and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) programs. For questions related to this decision on specific programs, please contact each program separately.
Last Modified: June 26, 2023