Program Overview

OES (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) Methodology

The Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) 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 OES program provides annual estimates of occupational employment and wages for the Nation, State, and Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA). Information is derived from semiannual surveys of employers conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in collaboration with LEAD. The OES program produces occupational data series for the Nation, State of North Carolina, 17 MSAs and 4 Nonmetropolitan geographic areas within North Carolina. Estimates for all occupations are not available for all geographies. Some estimates are suppressed to protect the confidentiality of employer respondents and other estimates are suppressed due to data quality issues. Blank cells in the selected data series indicate that estimates are not available for the selected series, while cells with asterisks indicate data suppression. OES data are released on an annual basis and the corresponding data reflect an employment and wage reference period from the prior year. For example, the OES data that were released in 2020 reflect a reference period of May of 2019.

The OES program surveys approximately 180,000 to 200,000 establishments nationwide per six-month survey panel. Survey panels are combined over three years to yield a sample of over 1 million business establishments. This three-year six panel survey process is utilized to reduce respondent burden. North Carolina’s sample size includes approximately 6,000 establishments for each six-month panel.

Employer respondents provide information regarding the number of employees on their payroll by job title along with information regarding employee wages. The collected employment and wage information is referenced to May or November depending on the survey panel. Each job title is coded to an occupational title utilizing the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. The SOC system was first utilized in the OES program in 1999. The SOC system was updated in 2010 and again in 2018. As a result, the 2019 OES estimates released in 2020 utilize a hybrid system to classify occupations. This hybrid classification systems integrates tiles and codes from the 2010 and 2018 SOC systems.

The OES program produces occupational and wage estimates for the Nation, State of North Carolina, 14 MSAs and 4 Nonmetropolitan geographic areas. Information is available by six-digit SOC code and for broad occupational groups. Available statistics include employment, response rate, employment relative standard error, mean hourly wage, mean annual wage, and wage relative standard error. Additional estimates for hourly and annual wages are available for the following percentiles: 10%, 25%, 50% (median), 75% and 90%. The relative standard errors for employment and wage are measures of the reliability of the statistics. The smaller the relative standard error, the more precise the estimate.

OES data are released on an annual basis. The corresponding data reflect an employment and wage reference period from the year prior to the release year. For example, the OES data that were released in 2020 reflect a reference period of May of 2019. Estimates for all occupations are not available for all geographies. Some estimates are suppressed to protect the confidentiality of employer respondents and other estimates are suppressed due to data quality issues. Missing occupations in the selected data series indicate that estimates are not available for the selected series, while cells with asterisks indicate data suppression.

Employment estimates in the OES program reflect full-time and part-time employees, workers on paid vacation or other type of paid leave, workers assigned temporarily to other units and paid owners, officers, and staff of incorporated firms. The OES survey excludes proprietors, owners and partners of unincorporated firms, unpaid family workers, workers on unpaid leave, and contractors and temporary agency employees not on the establishment payroll.

Wage estimates include straight time gross pay, exclusive of premium pay. Base rate, cost-of-living allowances, tips, guaranteed pay, hazardous-duty pay, incentive pay, commissions, production bonuses and on-call pay are included in the wage estimates. Types of compensation excluded include back pay, jury duty pay, overtime pay, severance pay, shift differentials, non-production bonuses, and tuition reimbursements.

The OES program collects wage information utilizing 12 wage intervals. Employers report the number of employees in each occupational job title by wage intervals. Wage estimates are produced utilizing a mean wage value for each wage interval, except for the highest interval which uses the lower bound of the wage interval. The interval mean wage values are then assigned to all workers in the reported interval. The total weighted wages in each interval are summed across all intervals and divided by the total occupational employment to produce an estimated average (mean) wage for each occupation. Wage estimates produced in the OES program are adjusted to reflect wages as of the May reference period.

There is a small group of occupations, including teachers, actors, athletes, coaches, sports officials, flight attendants and pilots, where a standard work-year assumption is not valid and therefore only annual wage estimates are available. There is also a small number of occupations were only hourly wages are available. These include entertainment workers who are paid hourly rates and do not generally work 40 hours per week.

Additional information regarding the OES program including data for the Nation and other states can be accessed on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website at https://www.bls.gov/oes/home.htm