BLS QCEW Employment, Establishments & Wages Scraper

Export official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages records by geography, industry, ownership and quarter. QCEW covers more than 95% of U.S. jobs and publishes detailed establishment, employment and wage cells across a multi-million-record archive.

The Actor uses BLS's keyless Open Data CSV slices, automatically resolves the latest published quarter and writes records continuously without a browser or proxy.

Use cases

• Labor-market, workforce and compensation analytics.
• Site selection, economic development and commercial real-estate research.
• Industry concentration and location-quotient models.
• Recruiting territory and talent-pool analysis.
• Regional growth, establishment and wage trend dashboards.

Input

Field	Description
years	Empty uses the latest available quarter; explicit years enable historical exports.
quarters	Quarters 1-4; empty with explicit years means all quarters.
industryCodes	Exact QCEW industry slice codes; 10 is total, all industries.
areaFipsPrefixes	BLS area-code prefix filters.
ownershipCodes	Total, private and government ownership codes.
aggregationLevels	Exact QCEW aggregation-level codes.
minEmployment, minEstablishments	Minimum labor-market size.
minQuarterlyWages	Minimum total quarterly wages.
disclosedOnly	Exclude suppressed cells.
maxResults	Up to 500,000 items per run.

{
  "years": ["2025", "2024"],
  "quarters": ["1", "2", "3", "4"],
  "industryCodes": ["10", "31-33", "54"],
  "areaFipsPrefixes": ["06"],
  "ownershipCodes": ["5"],
  "minEmployment": 100,
  "maxResults": 50000
}

Output

Each item is a unique year–quarter–area–ownership–industry–aggregation cell. Output includes establishments, all three monthly employment levels, average employment, total and taxable wages, contributions, average weekly wage, location quotients and year-over-year changes.

{
  "year": 2025,
  "quarter": 4,
  "areaFips": "01000",
  "ownershipCode": "0",
  "industryCode": "10",
  "establishments": 165321,
  "averageMonthlyEmployment": 2120000,
  "totalQuarterlyWages": 36100000000,
  "averageWeeklyWage": 1310
}

Scale

One current 10 industry slice already contains roughly 19,000 records. Combining detailed industry codes, four quarters and multiple years opens a much larger pool. For exports above the 500,000-item run cap, segment by year, quarter, industry or area.

API and integrations

Use Apify Console, REST API, JavaScript, Python or MCP. Export JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel, XML and RSS and connect schedules, webhooks, Make, Zapier, Google Sheets, databases and BI platforms.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~bls-qcew-employment-wages-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"industryCodes":["10"],"areaFipsPrefixes":["48"],"maxResults":10000}'

FAQ

Does it require a BLS API key? No.

What does empty input do? It finds the latest published QCEW quarter and exports the total-all-industries slice.

What is areaFips? It is BLS's five-character QCEW area identifier, covering national, state, county, metropolitan and other statistical areas.

Why are some measures null? BLS suppresses cells to protect employer confidentiality. Use disclosedOnly to omit records with a disclosure code.

Can I request a NAICS range? Use BLS's exact industry slice code, including values such as 31-33; the Actor converts the filename format automatically.

Responsible use

This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by BLS. QCEW values are aggregate statistical cells, not individual employer records. Revisions and disclosure controls are preserved from the official source.

Changelog

2026-08-05

• Initial BLS QCEW employment and wage exporter.
• Added latest-period discovery, multi-slice processing, normalized metrics and commercial filters.
• Verified live source behavior and high-volume output.