Industry / DOCUMENTED CSV
2025 County Employment & Wage Reference
Compare employment and wage context across counties and industries. A labeled annual reference with ownership separated, county totals included, and suppressed values clearly identified.
2025 BLS QCEW annual averages · 2022 NAICS with BLS detail · fixed historical edition
01 / KNOW THE FIT
A useful join starts
with a clear meaning.
What you can do with it
Add local employment and pay context to a location study, regional industry analysis or sales-territory review. Compare selected county industries with consistent annual measures and inspect the separately published county totals.
What one row means
One row is one county, six-digit QCEW industry and ownership category in calendar 2025. It includes establishment counts, annual average employment, annual wages, mean weekly pay and mean annual pay. Government and private ownership remain separate.
Unique keycounty_fips + industry_code + ownership_code
How to join it
Keep county_fips, industry_code and ownership_code as text and join on all three. Ownership 5 is private; 1, 2 and 3 are federal, state and local government. QCEW uses 2022 NAICS with BLS specialty-trade extensions and an unclassified category; industry_code_type identifies them.
Coverage, with the edges visible
991,071 county/industry/ownership records across 3,143 observed counties and equivalents and 1,029 industry codes in the 50 states and DC. All have published establishment counts; 273,531 disclose employment and wages, while 717,540 suppress those measures. There are 15,646 separate county/ownership totals.
Keep in mind
- This is calendar 2025 annual data, not current wages, a time series or a live feed. Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and unknown/unassigned counties are outside this edition.
- Employment counts covered workplace jobs, not unique people, residents, occupations or full-time equivalents. Mean pay is not a median wage or offered salary; QCEW excludes self-employment and other activities outside its coverage.
- Suppressed employment and wages are blank with an explicit status. Published zero remains zero. An absent county/industry/ownership key is not a reported zero. Do not reconstruct suppressed cells or present a sum of disclosed detail as a complete total.
- County totals overlap their ownership components. The 2023 CBP product uses 2017 NAICS, different coverage and mid-March employment; it is not directly comparable to these annual averages. Geographic vintages also matter.
Joins official BLS county, industry and ownership labels; validates source schemas, unique keys and every selection outcome; preserves published units and rounded values. Converts N-flagged employment/wage placeholders into blanks while retaining published establishments. An independent pass compares every delivered fact with original source cells. Retained raw, staging and preparation layers support offline reprocessing. How we prepare and version our data →
02 / TRY THE SHAPE
Real rows. Before you buy.
These are the first three rows from the delivered CSV, showing 7 of 17 fields. The free download contains the first five rows and all 17 fields; it is a format sample, not a coverage test.
| county_fips | industry_code | ownership_code | annual_avg_establishments | annual_avg_employment | avg_weekly_wage_usd | employment_wage_status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 47157 | 111110 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | published |
| 53035 | 111110 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3610 | published |
| 01003 | 111110 | 5 | 1 | suppressed |
03 / NO GUESSING
Main table fields, explained.
The main table’s field dictionary from the current download. CSV has no built-in types; these are the intended import types.
| Field | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
county_fips | string | Five-digit county/equivalent code retained as text; 50 states/DC only; unknown county 999 excluded. |
county_name | string | BLS area label, preserved including state. |
industry_code | string | Six-digit QCEW industry code, based on 2022 NAICS with BLS extensions; text. County totals use source code 10. |
industry_name | string | BLS industry label preserved, including its source code prefix. |
industry_code_type | string | naics_detail, bls_specialty_trade_detail, unclassified, or all_industries. BLS 238 detail differs from Census NAICS; 999999 is not a known economic activity. |
ownership_code | string | 1 federal, 2 state, 3 local government, 5 private; separate county totals also contain 0 total covered. Text. |
ownership_name | string | Official BLS ownership label. Total Covered overlaps ownership components; do not sum them together. |
reference_year | integer | 2025, the calendar year represented; distinct from source retrieval and ACD processing dates. |
naics_vintage | string | 2022, with BLS extensions retained explicitly. |
annual_avg_establishments | integer | Rounded annual average of four quarterly establishment counts; published even if employment/wages are suppressed. |
annual_avg_employment | integer | Rounded annual average of 12 monthly covered job counts. Workplace jobs, not unique residents or full-time equivalents. |
total_annual_wages_usd | integer | Four-quarter total covered wages in nominal USD, not thousands. Includes bonuses and other covered compensation. |
avg_weekly_wage_usd | integer | BLS mean weekly pay in nominal USD per covered job; not an occupational wage, median or full-time salary. |
avg_annual_pay_usd | integer | BLS mean annual pay in nominal USD per covered job. Preserve published rounding; not necessarily an individual worker's annual earnings. |
employment_wage_status | string | published or suppressed. For N source disclosure, the four employment/wage analytical values are blank and establishments remain published. |
disclosure_code | string | Original BLS flag: blank for published, N for suppressed. Suppressed source employment/wage zeros are placeholders, not measured zeros. |
source_row | integer | One-based data-row number in the retained 2025.annual.singlefile.csv, excluding its header. |
04 / INSIDE THE DOWNLOAD
Data, with its context.
One ZIP · 18.4 MB · 17 files. No account or subscription required.
README.mdImport guidance, method, attribution, and limitationsacceptance.jsonIndependent original-source cell and coverage comparisonsall_tables_dictionary.jsonField definitions for all four data/reference tableschecksums.jsonSHA-256 checksums for the release filescounties.csvCounty labels and disclosed/suppressed detail-row countscounty_industry.csvMain prepared table · UTF-8 CSVcounty_totals.csvSeparately published all-industry county totals, by ownership and total covereddata_dictionary.jsonTypes and definitions for every fieldexample.pyNotebook-compatible county employment and wage comparisonexample_input.csvFictional market labels paired with real county, industry and ownership identifiersexample_output.txtChecked printed resultsexample_result.csvChecked market comparison with source measures and statusesindustries.csvIndustry labels, code types, vintage and coverage countsmetadata.jsonSource provenance, production time, counts, and CSV checksumprovenance.jsonRetained source identifiers, URLs and file checksumsquality_report.jsonCoverage, missingness and product-specific quality checksrevision.jsonChanges and free-upgrade eligibility for this ACD revision
05 / DATES THAT MEAN SOMETHING
Sources, versions & changes.
Source versions identify the inputs. Our processing revision describes how we prepare them. Either kind of change creates a new ACD release; the package date records when it was built.
Current source versions
- Source edition
- 2025 QCEW annual averages
- Industry classification
- 2022 NAICS with BLS-specific detail
- Retained source Last-Modified
- August 21, 2026; not asserted as the publication date
- ACD source capture
- October 17, 2026
- ACD preparation revision
- 1 · county industry and ownership reference
- Package prepared (UTC)
- BLS QCEW annual source files
- BLS QCEW questions, coverage and disclosure
- BLS and QCEW industry-code differences
- BLS public-domain notice
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, QCEW. The original statistics are freely available. ACD sells preparation, validation and documentation. Independent preparation; no BLS endorsement.
RELEASE HISTORY
Oct 17, 2026 · current package (UTC)
First ACD annual edition: county industry and separate total tables, county and industry reference tables, source-selection summary, dictionaries, provenance, independent acceptance and a checked Python example.
2025 QCEW: source scope and preparation recordProcessing corrections and improvements for your purchased source edition are free. Genuinely new source editions may be sold separately. See the update policy and access instructions.
Check the downloaded CSV’s integrity
The metadata file inside the ZIP records this SHA-256 checksum for county_industry.csv. A matching checksum confirms identical CSV bytes.
38174871bd5b6692f2854589f7868d21f52ee22935be70cfbdfca110f4603406READY TO PUT IT TO WORK?
2025 County Employment & Wage Reference
$29 USD · one time · 991,071 county / industry / ownership records