All employees, thousands, total nonfarm, seasonally adjusted

The Current Employment Statistics Program provides employment, paid hours, and earnings information on a national basis in considerable industrial detail. The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data each month from a sample of establishments in all nonfarm activities including government. A sample of approximately 145,000 businesses and government agencies representing approximately 557,000 worksites throughout the United States is utilized for this monthly survey. For hours and earnings of production or nonsupervisory workers in private, nonagricultural industries, the sample contains about 270,000 employer units.

The data include series for total employment; number of women employees; number of production or nonsupervisory employees; and for both all employees and for production and nonsupervisory employees, average hourly earnings, average weekly hours, average weekly earnings, and average weekly overtime hours. Overtime hours are produced for manufacturing industries only. All employment, hours, and earnings series are classified according to the 2012 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The industry code used in the survey corresponds to the NAICS code, except in those cases where more than one NAICS has been combined.

For all employees, women, and production or nonsupervisory employees, over 4,400 published monthly employment series are available. The series for all employees include more than 900 industries seasonally adjusted and over 900 not seasonally adjusted at various levels of aggregation. About 6,800 series are published each month for average weekly earnings, average hourly earnings, average weekly hours, and, in manufacturing, average weekly overtime hours. Hours and earnings data are available for about 600 industries. Over 5,300 special derivative series such as indexes and constant dollar series are also available. Most employment series begin in 1990, although some are available from 1939 to the present. Employment by major industry sector is available from 1939.

Observations for data series are monthly in almost all cases; quarterly averages are available for total employment, average weekly hours, and average overtime hours, seasonally adjusted. Annual averages are available for all series which are not adjusted for seasonality. Earnings are measured in dollars and are stored with two decimal places. Average weekly and overtime hours are measured in hours and are stored with one decimal place. Employment is measured in thousands of workers and is stored with one decimal place for three-digit NAICS and lower-level industries; other employment data are stored with no decimal place.

Updates are usually available on the third Friday following the reporting week (week containing the 12th) in the reference month. These updates contain first estimates for the reference month, second estimates for the month preceding the reference month, and third estimates for the month two months prior to the reference month. Each year with the release of January estimates in February, CES data are re-anchored to universe counts of nonfarm employment or benchmarks for the most recent March. All not seasonally adjusted series are subject to revision back to the prior year's benchmarked data (21 months of data), while 5 years of seasonally adjusted estimates may be revised.

References: BLS Handbook of Methods, Chapter 2, "Employment, hours, and earnings from the establishment survey", http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/homch2_itc.htm.