Time series · qcew

County employment and wages (QCEW)

Quarterly employment, total wages, average weekly wage and establishment counts covered by unemployment insurance, all industries and ownerships combined, for every county, state and the nation from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2014 to the latest quarter. Each date is the first month of its quarter (2026-01 is Q1 2026). The national total covers the 50 states and DC; Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are listed separately. Connecticut appears as its eight legacy counties through 2023 and its nine planning regions from 2024, as BLS publishes it.

Updates
Quarterly
Coverage
—
Current version
—
Last published
—
Validation
—
License
US Government work
Commercial use
Allowed

Chart

County employment and wages (QCEW)

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Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Show the data as a table

The table appears once the data has loaded.

Use the API

Each series and location is its own small file. The examples follow the series and location picked above. See the docs for versions, caching and errors.

curl

# One series for one place (.json or .csv)
curl -s "https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/qcew/total-covered/usa.json"

# Every series and place in one file
curl -sO "https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/qcew/download/qcew.csv"

Python (polars)

import polars as pl

# One series for one place
df = pl.read_csv("https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/qcew/total-covered/usa.csv")

# Every series and place, with series and location columns
everything = pl.read_parquet("https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/qcew/download/qcew.parquet")

JavaScript

const res = await fetch("https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/qcew/total-covered/usa.json");
if (!res.ok) throw new Error((await res.json()).detail); // errors are problem+json
const { meta, data } = await res.json();
console.log(meta.location_name, data.at(-1)); // { date, value, ... }

Downloads

The whole dataset in one file, with series and location columns. Parquet keeps the column types and is much smaller.

Schema and series

Each series file has these columns. The bulk downloads add series and location columns in front.

Column Type Unit Can be empty Description
date month (YYYY-MM) — no First month of the quarter
establishments integer establishments yes Establishments in the quarter
month1_employment integer jobs yes Covered employment in the first month of the quarter
month2_employment integer jobs yes Covered employment in the second month
month3_employment integer jobs yes Covered employment in the third month
total_wages integer USD yes Total wages paid in the quarter
avg_weekly_wage integer USD yes Average weekly wage
suppressed true / false — no True where BLS withheld employment and wages for confidentiality

Series

Series id Name
total-covered Total covered, all industries (ownership code 0, NAICS 10)

Locations

Covers all 57 US states and equivalents (ids: us- plus the USPS code (us-ca, us-dc)); all 3,222 US counties and equivalents (ids: us-county- plus the 5-digit FIPS code); 15 more named places.

Location id Name
usa United States (50 states and DC)
us-county-02261 Valdez-Cordova Census Area, AK (through 2019)
us-county-02270 Wade Hampton Census Area, AK (renamed Kusilvak, 02158, in 2015)
us-county-09001 Fairfield County, CT (legacy county, through 2023)
us-county-09003 Hartford County, CT (legacy county, through 2023)
us-county-09005 Litchfield County, CT (legacy county, through 2023)
us-county-09007 Middlesex County, CT (legacy county, through 2023)
us-county-09009 New Haven County, CT (legacy county, through 2023)
us-county-09011 New London County, CT (legacy county, through 2023)
us-county-09013 Tolland County, CT (legacy county, through 2023)
us-county-09015 Windham County, CT (legacy county, through 2023)
us-county-46113 Shannon County, SD (renamed Oglala Lakota, 46102, in 2015)
us-county-78010 St. Croix, VI
us-county-78020 St. John, VI
us-county-78030 St. Thomas, VI

Place names come from the shared location registry; see Sources.

Source and license

Source
BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) open-data CSV slices
Publisher
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
License
US Government work (public domain in the United States) (LicenseRef-US-Government-Work)
Commercial use
Allowed

Credit the source with this exact text:

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (https://www.bls.gov/cew/).

Checked every 1 day. If the source hasn't changed in 120 days, the status page flags it as stale.

Endpoints

Every URL for this dataset. To pin the current version, put it after the id: /v1/qcew@<version>. The API reference describes each response.

What URL
Metadata: version, coverage, downloads, validation /v1/qcew
Versions and monthly snapshots /v1/qcew/versions
Series and locations /v1/qcew/locations
Total covered, all industries (ownership code 0, NAICS 10) (JSON) /v1/qcew/total-covered/{location}.json
Total covered, all industries (ownership code 0, NAICS 10) (CSV) /v1/qcew/total-covered/{location}.csv
Whole dataset (CSV) /v1/qcew/download/qcew.csv
Whole dataset (Parquet) /v1/qcew/download/qcew.parquet