Data sources / Federal statistics

BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

Published employment and wage statistics based on covered unemployment-insurance employment. Geography and industry tables describe covered establishments and workers, rather than named acquisition candidates.

Last reviewed 14 October 2026 · report an error

Publisher: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Access: Free
Coverage: Published employment and wage statistics based on covered unemployment-insurance employment. Geography and industry tables describe covered establishments and workers, rather than named acquisition candidates.
Identifiers: NAICS code and vintage; Geography code; Ownership category; Reference period
Freshness: Quarterly publication with monthly employment observations; releases can be revised.
Official URL: https://www.bls.gov/cew/

What it can establish

Use BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for a defined acquisition-research question. Match each record to the right entity using its identifiers (NAICS code and vintage, Geography code, Ownership category) before accepting its contents, and keep U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics's own scope and attribution on the finding.

Employment, wage and establishment measures for the specified covered population, industry, geography and period.
A labor-market reference for comparing locations or testing whether a market description is consistent with published employment evidence.

What it cannot establish

A specific business's employee count, wage bill, profit margin, workforce availability or recruiting success.
A complete census of every form of work, including activity outside the program's coverage, or a roster of businesses to approach.

A search that returns nothing in BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages describes the search performed. Coverage here is published employment and wage statistics based on covered unemployment-insurance employment, so a missing record becomes a negative finding only where that coverage reaches the company in question and the evidence standard supports the inference. Otherwise the question stays open.

How Docket uses it

Your acquisition criteria become the agents' questions. BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages can support some of them and leave others unanswered; its freshness (quarterly publication with monthly employment observations; releases can be revised) is weighed answer by answer and it receives no blanket reliability score.

Triage. Keeps geography-level labor context outside company identity and headcount fields.
Scout. Collects the period, industry definition and measurement unit with each relevant contextual observation.
Audit. Checks that a labor-market comparison has not been misrepresented as evidence about the target's own workforce.

Scout records typed answers from a fixed list with verbatim quotations from retained pages. Audit reviews only the retained material, with every fetch tool denied. It settles supported contradictions, strikes unquotable answers and leaves gaps visible. See the research-agent method and screening criteria guide for the surrounding workflow.

Pitfalls and review questions

Suppression, revisions and industry changes can make apparent movements difficult to interpret. Keep release context with the value.
Average wages are aggregate measures. They are not a salary quote for a particular role or a forecast of integration savings.

Where the numbers come from

The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages is compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from the quarterly tax reports that employers file with state unemployment insurance programmes. Because it draws on administrative records covering the great majority of employment, it provides a near-census of employer establishments by industry and county, with employment by month and total wages for each quarter. The Bureau's handbook of methods describes the concepts and procedures.

Like County Business Patterns it counts establishments, and an employer with several sites appears once per site, although the unit of reporting can vary by state. The programme provides data at fine industry and geographic levels, and its release schedule is faster than some Census series, which makes it useful for tracking recent change.

Confidentiality and comparison issues

Cells that would reveal an individual employer are suppressed, so small counties and narrow industries often lack data. Differences between QCEW and Census figures for the same industry and place arise from different sources, reference periods and definitions; neither is wrong, and a researcher who compares them should say which was used for which statement. A published reconciliation of the two does not exist for every cell.

Wages are reported in total for the quarter, not per person, and employment is measured for the month, so derived averages mix the two and need care. Treat computed figures such as wage per worker as approximations and mark them accordingly.

Illustration (fictional)

A researcher examining the plumbing trade in a metropolitan area compares establishment and employment counts from QCEW with those from County Business Patterns. The employment totals differ by a few percent. The researcher records both, states the reference period of each, and uses the QCEW series to show whether employment in the trade has grown over the latest four quarters.

Federal statistics

Census County Business Patterns

A published establishment, employment or payroll measure for a defined geography, industry classification and reference year.

Federal statistics

Census Statistics of U.S. Businesses

The published distribution of covered business activity across enterprise-size categories for a specified reference period.

Company-published

Job postings

That a specific role, location, skill or responsibility was advertised in the retained posting at the observed time.

Sources and further reading

Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Near-census employment and wage counts by county and industry, monthly granularity, published quarterly.
Business Employment Dynamics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Quarterly establishment births, deaths, expansions and contractions.
County Business Patterns (CBP), U.S. Census Bureau. Establishment counts, employment and payroll by NAICS code and county. The spine of any honest market map.
Economic Census: NAICS Codes & Understanding Industry Classification Systems, U.S. Census Bureau. How NAICS is built, how an establishment gets its code and why codes are assigned by activity.

These links identify research contexts to investigate, rather than conclusions about sector attractiveness. Ask how BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages would be used on your list or return to the complete source directory.

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