QCEW Program Description

The QCEW program provides a count of wage and salary employment. Counts are produced for the states and counties. The counts only include those employees covered by unemployment insurance, which is about 98% of people employed at establishments. The program publishes employment and wage totals for various industries, based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).

Most of the information about employment and wages comes from Unemployment Insurance records, supplemented by the collection from establishments of additional information about what each business does and the number of its employees. Data is produced quarterly and published approximately seven months after the end of the quarter.