Early Benchmark Revisions of State Payroll Employment

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia produces quarterly early benchmark estimates of monthly state employment for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Our state estimates incorporate the more comprehensive job estimates released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) to augment the sample data from the BLS’s Current Employment Statistics (CES).

The BLS issues benchmarked revisions of its monthly CES state employment estimates in March of each year by incorporating its QCEW data available through September of the prior year. Since the QCEW data are available quarterly, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia researchers are able to create our own early benchmark estimates on a more timely basis.

Our methodology was adapted from an approach pioneered by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and further modified to accommodate all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The estimate of U.S. employment obtained from the sum of our early benchmark state estimates is not designed nor intended to be an accurate measure of national employment. To understand this analysis, read more about its purposes and how to interpret the results.

Our early benchmark estimates will be released approximately one week after the QCEW data become available. The QCEW data are released just over five months after the end of each quarter.