Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW)

Mapping & Data Analytics Team 2026-09-01

Overview

The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) is the standard source for local labor market analysis in the United States. Produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, QCEW is primarily derived from unemployment insurance (UI) administrative records submitted by employers to state agencies — not a household or establishment sample survey.

QCEW captures three core dimensions of local labor markets: total employment, average annual wages, and the count of establishments reporting wages. The sector breakdowns — available across the full NAICS hierarchy — make it possible to examine not just how much employment exists in a place, but where it is concentrated and how wages vary across industries.

NOTE

Two supplemental surveys add to the administrative foundation: the Annual Refiling Survey (ARS) contacts roughly one-third of private businesses annually to verify business activity and location, and the Multiple Worksite Report (MWR) requires multi-establishment employers to report quarterly employment and wage data by worksite. Because its primary source is administrative rather than sampled, QCEW is not subject to sampling error and covers roughly 95% of all U.S. jobs. Data are available at the county, state, and national level from 1990 to the present, with quarterly releases and annual summaries by NAICS industry.

What this data tells us about rural America

QCEW provides the baseline picture of a local labor market: where covered jobs are located, how much those jobs pay, and which industries account for that employment. It measures jobs at covered establishments, not the employment status of residents — a distinction that matters in communities with significant commuting or remote work. For questions about the resident workforce, pair QCEW with ACS. Together, QCEW pairs naturally with BDS, which tracks how the business and employment base is changing beneath those levels.

Because its primary source is unemployment insurance administrative records, QCEW has broad coverage of wage and salary employment. For rural analysis, this is particularly valuable as that sample-based employment estimates can become less precise in small counties where sample sizes are thin.

What the data reveals about rural communities is not a single pattern but a range of conditions. Some rural counties show employment concentrated in a small number of industries, while others have a more distributed employment base across sectors. QCEW makes these differences visible and provides a basis for examining how sector concentration relates to wage levels and exposure to industry-specific economic shocks.

Wages in rural communities tend to be lower on average than in metro areas, but the gap varies substantially by industry. QCEW allows analysts to identify higher-wage sectors within rural economies and examine whether communities are gaining or losing covered employment in those sectors over time.

Coverage

Geography: County, State, National
Time range: 1990–present (NAICS-based; data available before 1990 under the prior SIC classification system)
Update frequency: Employment data available monthly; wages and establishment counts available quarterly and annually. Full quarterly industry detail published within 6 months of each quarter’s end.
Industry detail: Down to 6-digit NAICS at the county and state level, subject to disclosure restrictions
Universe: Employers covered by state unemployment insurance (UI) laws and federal workers covered by the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE) program (~95% of U.S. wage and salary employment)

NOTE

Notable exclusions: QCEW does not cover proprietors, the unincorporated self-employed, unpaid family members, certain farm and domestic workers, or railroad workers (covered by a separate railroad UI system). Workers who received no wages during the pay period due to work stoppages, temporary layoffs, illness, or unpaid leave are also excluded. Certain federal national security agencies are excluded for security reasons. See Table A — Coverage Exclusions on the BLS QCEW overview page for the complete list.

Key variables

Employment

Average annual employment (total and by NAICS sector)
Employment by ownership (private, federal, state, local government)

Wages

Total quarterly and annual wages
Average annual pay per worker (nominal dollars)
Average weekly wages

QCEW wages are broadly defined — they include bonuses, stock options, severance pay, tips, and the cash value of meals and lodging, making them a more complete measure of total labor compensation than base pay alone. Employer-side benefit contributions (health insurance, workers’ compensation, pension) are not included; amounts withheld from worker paychecks for taxes and union dues are.

Sector breakdowns

Available at multiple NAICS levels. CORI’s cori.data.qcew package exposes two classification systems: the 11 BLS supersectors and CORI’s own three-way aggregation — Tradable Goods, Tradable Services, and Local Services — designed for rural economic analysis.

Accessing the data

Via CORI R package

The cori.data.qcew package provides tidy access to QCEW data at the county, state, and national level. It includes CORI’s three-way supersector classification (Tradable Goods, Tradable Services, Local Services) and an employment concentration measure (HHI) that makes it easier to assess how dependent a rural economy is on a small number of industries — moving beyond employment counts toward structural analysis.

library(cori.data.qcew)

get_employment(geography = "county", years = 2018:2023)
get_wage_salary(geography = "county", years = 2018:2023)
get_sector_employment(geography = "county", sector_type = "CORI")

Direct from source

Annual and quarterly CSV files are available for bulk download from the BLS QCEW data page. Files are organized by year, geography, and ownership type. See the BLS QCEW overview for full documentation of concepts, definitions, and coverage.

Package: cori.data.qcew — CORI’s tidy access layer with supersector classification and HHI
Package: cori.data — meta-package including cori.data.qcew
Dataset: Census Business Dynamics Statistics — QCEW shows the structure and level of covered employment; BDS shows how the business and employment base is changing beneath those levels
Dataset: American Community Survey — resident workforce characteristics that complement QCEW’s establishment-based employment picture
Project: Rural Economic Outlook — QCEW is a core input to CORI’s multi-dataset economic analysis