The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) (OEWS) survey is a semi-annual survey of approximately 200,000 non-farm business establishments conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), headquartered in Washington, DC with six regional offices and one office in each state.
Until the spring of 2021 it was officially called the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES), and it is often cited or documented with that name or abbreviation.
The OEWS survey is designed to produce estimates of employment and wages by occupation by four-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) in each State-level Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA-“urban”) or Balance-of-State (BOS-“rural”) geographic level, and their aggregates.
During the sampling process, the National frame (using data collected by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages) of business establishments (approximately 7 million frame business establishments in-scope) is allocated for 1.2 million sample cases, then “divided” by 6 for each geography/industry cell (1.2 million/6=200,000).
The main occupational-based estimates that are calculated are: Users of the OEWS data include colleges and trade school students, who use occupational information before entering the work force, temporary employment firms, and people who start businesses and want to know how much workers in various occupations are paid.