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State and Metro Area Employment, Hours, & Earnings
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Preliminary Benchmark Revisions to Current Establishment Survey Data for states and select metropolitan areas
Each year, CES employment estimates are benchmarked to comprehensive counts of employment from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). These counts are derived primarily from state unemployment insurance (UI) tax records 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.
Preliminary benchmark revisions will be presented for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and metropolitan areas with a Census 2020 population of 1 million or more in the Current Employment Statistics Preliminary Benchmark (State and Area) news release.
Noncovered employment levels for the upcoming benchmark are not available at the time of 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 Summary news release. For more information on the CES benchmarking process for states and metropolitan areas, see the CES State and Area benchmark article.
Historical data for preliminary and final benchmark revisions are available for download below. Preliminary benchmark revisions to CES national data series are available in the Current Employment Statistics Preliminary Benchmark (National) news release.
Historical Data
preliminary-benchmark-histories (XLSX)
Last Modified Date: September 9, 2025