The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program is a federal-state cooperative effort between the North Carolina Department of Commerce, Labor and Economic Analysis Division (LEAD) and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The QCEW program provides quarterly employment and wage statistics by industry for the Nation, State, Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), 20 Workforce Development Board areas, Council of Government areas, Prosperity Zones and counties. Information is derived from employer quarterly Unemployment Insurance Tax and Wage reports and related data sources.

The QCEW program produces quarterly employment and wage statistics including the number of establishments, monthly employment, average employment, total quarterly wages, and average weekly wage. Data are available by establishment size, by ownership type (private, state government, local government, and federal government) and by industry utilizing the North American Industrial Classification System. All data series are not available for all geographies and some data are suppressed to protect the confidentiality of employer information.

Programs may not display data for all areas due to the unavailability of estimates at all geographic levels. Please note the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program data for the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC MSA only includes geographic and industry data for NC.