What Is BLS OES (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics)?

The OES survey is the foundation of AffordMap's salary data and is the most comprehensive source of occupation-level wage data in the United States.

Methodology: BLS surveys approximately 1.2 million employer establishments semiannually over a 3-year cycle, achieving coverage of about 57% of total U.S. employment. Establishments report the number of employees in each occupation and their wages. The large sample size and employer-based methodology make OES data significantly more reliable than self-reported salary surveys.

What's included: employment levels, mean wages, and percentile wages (10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th) for detailed occupations classified under the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. Data is available at the national, state, and metropolitan area levels.

Limitations: OES data is published with a 12-18 month lag. BLS publishes the May reference-period data approximately 12-18 months later (e.g., May 2025 data ships in spring 2026). It covers wage and salary workers only, self-employed individuals are excluded. Occupations are defined broadly; the SOC code for "Software Developers" includes everyone from junior developers to principal engineers. Benefits, bonuses, stock compensation, and overtime are not included in the wage figures.

The data is public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105 and freely downloadable as CSV files from the BLS website.

Example

Data source

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. View source data (opens in new tab)

Related terms