General
The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey is a semiannual mail survey of employers that measures occupational employment and occupational wage rates for wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments, by industry. OEWS estimates are constructed from a sample of about 41,400 establishments. Each year, forms are mailed to two semiannual panels of approximately 6,900 sampled establishments, one panel in May and the other in November. Estimates are based on responses from six semiannual panels collected over a 3-year period.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor funds the survey and provides the procedures and technical support. The New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) collects and processes the data.
Survey Definitions and Concepts
Many of the concepts and definitions used in the OEWS survey are similar to those in the Current Employment Statistics survey, a monthly BLS payroll survey of nonagricultural establishments. Many others, however, are unique to the OEWS survey. Key definitions for the OEWS survey follow:
An establishment is an economic unit that produces goods or services, such as a factory, a mine, or a store. It is generally at a single location and predominantly engaged in one economic activity.
The OEWS survey defines employment as the number of workers who can be classified as full-time or part-time employees, including workers on paid vacations or other types of leave; workers on unpaid short-term absences; salaried officers, executives, and staff members of incorporated firms; employees temporarily assigned to other units; and employees for whom the reporting unit is their permanent duty station, regardless of whether that unit prepares their paycheck. The survey excludes the self-employed, owners/partners of unincorporated firms, and unpaid family workers. Employees are reported in their present occupation which might be different from the occupation for which they were trained.
Wages for the OEWS survey are straight-time, gross pay, exclusive of premium pay. Base rate, cost-of-living allowances, guaranteed pay, hazardous-duty pay, incentive pay (including commissions and production bonuses, tips, and on-call pay) are included. Back pay, jury duty pay, overtime pay, severance pay, shift differentials, non-production bonuses, and tuition reimbursements are excluded.
The responding establishments are instructed to report hourly rates for part-time workers and to report annual rates for occupations that are typically paid at an annual rate but do not work 2,080 hours per year, such as teachers, pilots, and flight attendants. Other workers, such as some entertainment workers, are paid hourly rates, but generally do not work 40 hours per week, year-round. For these workers, only an hourly wage is reported.
The mean wage is the estimated total hourly wages of an occupation divided by its estimated employment, i.e., the average hourly wage.
The median wage is the estimated 50th percentile of the distribution of wages: 50 percent of workers in an occupation earn wages below the median wage, and 50 percent earn wages above.
The entry wage is the mean (average) of the bottom third of wages in an occupation.
The experienced wage is the mean (average) of the top two-thirds of wages in an occupation.
As a result of using three years of sampled data, some occupations have wage estimates that fall below the appropriate New York State minimum wage. In these cases, the estimates are increased to equal the current local base minimum wage that was in effect at the time the estimates were prepared ($16.00 per hour in New York City and Long Island, and $15.00 per hour in the remainder of the state) in June 2024. Wages may be subject to a higher minimum wage depending on a company's size, location, and/or industry. The minimum wage schedule is available on our minimum wage page.
Sampling Procedures
New York State's Unemployment Insurance (UI) files provide the universe from which the OEWS survey draws its sample. The employment benchmarks are obtained from reports submitted by employers to the UI program. In some non-manufacturing industries, supplemental sources are used for establishments that do not report to the UI program. The OEWS survey sample is stratified by metropolitan and nonmetropolitan area, industry, and size. To provide the most occupational coverage, larger employers are more likely to be selected than smaller employers. A census is taken of the executive branch of the federal government, the U.S. Postal Service, and state government.
Method of Collection
Survey schedules initially were mailed or emailed to virtually all sampled establishments. Additional mailings were sent to non-responding establishments. Telephone follow-ups were made to non-responding establishments throughout the course of the survey.
The Occupational Coding System
The May 2023 OEWS estimates contain approximately 830 occupational categories based on the Office of Management and Budget’s 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. Together, these occupations make up 22 of the 23 SOC major occupational groups. Major group 55, Military Specific Occupations, is not included.
For more information about the SOC system, please see the BLS website at www.bls.gov/soc/.
The Industry Coding System
The May 2023 OEWS estimates use the 2022 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). For more information about NAICS, see the BLS NAICS page.
The OEWS survey excludes the majority of the agricultural sector, with the exception of logging (NAICS 113310), support activities for crop production (NAICS 1151), and support activities for animal production (NAICS 1152). Private households (NAICS 814) also are excluded. OEWS federal government data include the U.S. Postal Service and the federal executive branch only. All other industries, including state and local government, are covered by the survey.
Estimation methodology
The OEWS survey is designed to produce estimates by combining six panels of data collected over a 3-year period. The 3-year period has approximately 41,400 sample members, and approximately 6.900 establishments per panel. Each semiannual panel represents a one-sixth sample of the full three-year sample plan. The full six-panel sample of 41,400 establishments allows the production of estimates at detailed levels of geography, industry, and occupation.
The May 2023 estimates were produced by a model-based estimation method using three years of OEWS data (MB3). Under MB3, data provided by survey respondents are used to model occupational staffing patterns and wages for all unobserved establishments in the population, including establishments that were not sampled, sampled establishments that did not respond, and respondents that did not meet stability criteria.
A donor pool typically consisting of 10 nearest neighbor responding establishments is used to predict data for each unobserved establishment; if 10 donors are not available, then as few as 5 can be used. Donors are matched to recipients based on detailed industry, geographic area, ownership, size, and survey panel. Within a given donor pool, donors that are more similar to the unobserved establishment are given more weight in determining the modeled data.
Each establishment’s population employment is set as the average of its May 2023 and November 2022 employment from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, the UI database from which the OEWS sample is drawn. Using adjustment factors derived from the OEWS survey data, wages collected in earlier survey panels are adjusted to the reference date of the estimates and donor wages are adjusted for differences between donor and recipient characteristics such as geographic area and industry.
The New York State Department of Labor used wage-updating factors for later time periods to further update the data to a more current time period, the first quarter of 2024. As a result, wage-updating factors have been applied to all of the data included in these estimates. The updated data contained in this report are not official BLS data series and BLS has not validated them. The New York State Department of Labor may adjust estimates to reflect changing economic conditions, updates, or changes in State or Federal law. The New York State Department of Labor publishes estimates for New York’s ten Labor Market Regions. These estimates are not produced nor reviewed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). BLS estimates can be found here.
Reliability of the Estimates
The occupational employment and wage rates in this report are estimates derived from a sample survey. Two types of errors are possible in an estimate based on a sample survey -- sampling error and nonsampling error. Sampling error occurs because the observations are based on a sample, rather than on the entire population. Nonsampling error is due to response, nonresponse, and operational errors.
Nonsampling error - This type of error is attributable to several causes, such as errors in the sampling frame; an inability to obtain information for all establishments in the sample; differences in respondents' interpretation of a survey question; an inability or unwillingness of the respondents to provide correct information; and errors made in recording, coding, or processing the data. Explicit measures of the effects of nonsampling error are not available.
Sampling error - When a sample, rather than an entire population, is surveyed, estimates differ from the true population values that they represent. This difference, the sampling error, occurs by chance and depends on the particular random sample used in a survey. Sampling error is characterized by the variance of the estimate or the standard error of the estimate (square root of the variance). The relative standard error is the ratio of the standard error to the estimate itself. Estimates of sampling variability for occupational employment and mean wage rates are provided for all employment and mean wage estimates to allow data users to determine if those statistics are reliable enough for their needs. Sample estimates from a given design are said to be unbiased when an average of the estimates from all possible samples yields the true population value. Empirical studies support that MB3 methods provide accurate estimates of sampling variability.
Estimated standard errors should be taken to indicate the magnitude of sampling error only. They are not intended to measure nonsampling error, including any biases in the data. Particular care should be exercised in the interpretation of small estimates or of small differences between estimates when the sampling error is relatively large, or the magnitude of the bias is unknown.
Changes and special procedures in the May 2023 estimates
The May 2023 estimates are the third official estimates to use the model-based MB3 estimation method introduced in the May 2021 release. MB3 has advantages over the previous estimation method, as described in the Monthly Labor Review article “Model-based estimates for the Occupational Employment Statistics program.”