The Current Employment Statistics (CES) program delivers monthly estimates of nonfarm payroll employment, average hourly earnings, and average weekly hours by industry. Produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), current employment statistics capture short-term fluctuations in employment that help businesses and policymakers assess economic momentum and labor-market health. CES data are central to measuring job creation and wage trends across sectors at the national, state, and metropolitan levels.
What Current Employment Statistics Cover
Published monthly, current employment statistics draw from a survey of approximately 119,000 businesses and government agencies representing around 629,000 individual worksites. The program provides detailed breakdowns across major industry sectors — including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, financial services, and government — making it one of the most comprehensive sources of short-term labor market data available. Whether you're tracking national hiring trends or analyzing employment shifts in a specific metro area, CES offers the depth and frequency needed for rigorous workforce analysis.
Why Current Employment Statistics Matter
As a high-frequency economic indicator, current employment statistics provide timely market-intelligence signals for a wide range of decision-makers. CES complements administrative datasets such as the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) and Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) by delivering near-real-time insights while maintaining statistical accuracy through annual benchmarking. Access to current employment statistics supports forecasting dashboards, sector-level analysis, and policy evaluation. Researchers, HR leaders, and workforce planners use CES to track wage pressures and employment cycles across industries and regions – making it a trusted resource for labor analytics, economic monitoring, and long-range strategic planning.
Access Current Employment Statistics with Social Explorer
Ready to put Current Employment Statistics data to work? Sign up for a free trial of Social Explorer and get instant access to CES data from 1939 to the present. Download dataset entries to use in your existing workflow or combine it with dozens of other demographic, economic, and housing datasets that are available through Social Explorer's expansive data library.