Official Site of The State of New Jersey

The OEWS survey is conducted in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands in conjunction with the BLS and the U.S. Employment and Training Administration (ETA). The stringent requirements of the OEWS survey, in terms of a statistically valid sample and methodology, combined with consistent survey forms and definitions, has resulted in quality wage data for hundreds of occupations that are truly comparable across all states and metropolitan areas. This is in direct contrast to previously available occupational wage data which existed for only a limited number of occupations and originated from a variety of different surveys, each collected over differing time periods using different questionnaires, methodologies, occupational titles and definitions.

The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, in conjunction with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), conducts the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Survey on a semi-annual basis, mailing OEWS survey forms to employers throughout the state.

The quality and the level of detail that can be provided from this survey depends on the cooperation received from the employer community. Wage data are published for specific areas and/or industries only if there are enough responses to ensure both the reliability of the data and the confidentiality of the respondents. The OEWS Survey is now mandatory under New Jersey Unemployment Compensation Law, Section 43:21-11 and is authorized by law 29 U.S.C. 2.

Occupational wage data is included for New Jersey and each of the state‘s nine metropolitan areas and is estimated from data collected through six surveys over the past three years.

The OEWS Survey uses the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system, which was designed to be used by all Federal statistical agencies reporting occupational data. For more information about the SOC system, see the SOC page of the BLS website.

Accessing Wage Data

OEWS Data is available in two formats: PDF Tables and Excel Tables. For both formats, data for each geographic area can be viewed for "All Industries Combined" or "By Major Industry Sector."  For the "All Industries Combined" files, scroll down to the end of the file to view data by occupation. The estimates "By Major Industry Sector" are in order of industry sector and, within each industry, by occupation.

Finding a Specific Occupation

The occupations in all of these tables are in order of their Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code. The SOC is organized into major occupational groups, starting with Management Occupations and ending with Transportation and Material Moving Occupations. When accessing PDF Tables, the occupational (and industry) definitions can be found at the end of the PDF table for each area. When accessing the Excel Tables, the Occupational Definitions (and Industry Definitions for data ‘By Major Industry’) are on separate sheets (tabs) within the spreadsheet.

Occupational Guide and Definitions: This section lists the major SOC categories (e.g., 41-0000 Sales and Related Occupations) and the individual occupations for which data is presented in the tables.

Alphabetical List Of Occupations: This section contains an alphabetical listing of the SOC occupational titles, the SOC code for each, and the major occupational group of each (but not the subgroup). Use this section to determine the SOC of an occupation and the major group it is under in the data tables.

Finding the Correct Industry Classification

Wage data "By Major Industry Group" shows wage data for publishable occupations within each major industry group (e.g., retail, manufacturing, construction, etc.). These groups are the major industry sectors as designated in the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). When using the PDF Tables, industry definitions are provided at the end of each PDF table. When using the Excel Tables, the Occupational Definitions (and Industry Definitions for data ‘By Major Industry’) are on separate sheets (tabs) within the spreadsheet.

The top of the "Industry Definitions" section contains a listing of the twenty major industry sectors in NAICS. Scroll down to access an abridged definition for that sector (unabridged definitions are available through the NAICS page of the BLS website). Once the appropriate industry sector is determined, the data for that industry may be easily found in any of the tables containing data by major industry group. These data tables are in order of industry code; within each industry, occupational data for that industry are listed.

Wage Data

OEWS wage data for the nation and other states (comparable occupational wages as published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Other New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development Sites

New Jersey Employment Projections: estimated and projected employment by occupation and industry for New Jersey

Other Bureau of Labor Statistics Sites

OEWS Homepage: links to OEWS data, news releases, publications, FAQ’s, and more.

BLS Homepage: data on occupations; industries; demographics; inflation & consumer spending; wages, earnings and benefits; employment and unemployment; business costs; productivity and more.

BLS detailed methodology & technical notes for the OEWS Wage Survey: includes detailed methodology & technical notes on OEWS Survey along with links to National, State, and MSA estimates as well as National “Occupational Profiles.”

Standard Occupational Classification page: BLS site for the 2010 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system.  Includes explanations, a User's Guide, a complete listing of SOC occupations and definitions, and information on 2018 SOC Revision.

BLS site for the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) classification system.

U.S Census Bureau's NAICS page: contains keyword search and downloads for the 2007 and 2012 NAICS definitions. These latest OEWS estimates are the first to utilize the 2012 NAICS. Earlier estimates were based on the 2007 NAICS.

Occupational Outlook Quarterly: Online version of the BLS publication of the same name.

The following is a summary of the OEWS Survey methodology as provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Click here for the more detailed set of "technical notes" available on the BLS web site.

Survey Definitions and Concepts

The OEWS Wage Survey is a semiannual mail survey measuring occupational employment and occupational wage rates for wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments, by industry. The results provided here are from the past six survey panels that were conducted over the prior three years.

The OEWS wage survey is conducted in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands in conjunction with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Currently the survey samples nearly 9,000 establishments per year in New Jersey. BLS provides the procedures and technical support, while the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development and other State Employment Security Agencies (SESAs) collect and disseminate the data. Key definitions are as follows:

An establishment is an economic unit, such as a factory, mine or store, which produces goods or provides services. It is generally at a single location and engaged predominantly in one economic activity.

Employment in the OEWS survey includes both full-time or part-time employees; workers on paid vacations or other types of leave; workers on unpaid or short-term absences; salaried officers; executives; 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 the occupation in which they are working, not necessarily for which they were trained.

Wages, as defined in the OEWS survey, are straight time (i.e., no overtime), base pay. In addition to base pay, also included are tips, cost-of-living allowances, guaranteed pay, hazardous-duty pay, on-call pay, and incentive pay (including commissions and production bonuses). Excluded from the wage are back pay, shift differentials, jury duty pay, overtime pay, severance pay, non-production (i.e., year-end) bonuses and tuition reimbursements.

The mean wage is the estimated total wages in an occupation divided by its estimated employment. The 25th percentile equals the wage that 25% of those employees reported in the occupation made less than while 75% made more than that figure. Similarly the 50th percentile or median wage equals the estimated single midpoint of all reported wages for the occupation -- half made less and half made more.  The 75th percentile equals the wage that 75% of the reported employees made less than while 25% made more.

The OEWS survey collects wage data in 12 pay ranges (whose minimum and maximum is defined in terms of both hourly and full-time yearly salary). Employers report the number of employees in an occupation per each pay range. The pay ranges are defined in terms of both an hourly wage and yearly salary. The two wage scales are "equivalent" based on a work year of 2,080 hours per year (40 hours per week times 52 weeks per year). The exceptions to this are certain occupations that do not generally work 2,080 hours per year. The wages for these occupations (such as teachers, musicians, producers-directors-actors, etc.) are in terms of a yearly salary only.

Development of Wage and Employment Estimates

The OEWS survey sample was drawn from the file of employers covered by the state's unemployment insurance (UI) system by BLS. Establishments in this universe were stratified by metropolitan area, industry code, and the establishment's employment size. The sample is designed to collect data over a three-year period with the objective of publishing wage data aggregated from the prior three years of survey data.

The OEWS Survey uses the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system, which was designed to be used by all Federal statistical agencies reporting occupational data. (see the SOC page of the BLS website for more information).

Current OEWS estimates use the 2017 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), previous estimates were based on the 2012 NAICS. For more information about NAICS, see the NAICS page of the BLS Web site.

Many of New Jersey's substate MSA configurations are "cross-state" areas comprised of counties from two or more states. In those instances, the data presented is representative of only the New Jersey portion of the MSA. For example, the entire "Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ MSA" is comprised of Warren County, NJ and three Pennsylvania counties. The data for the "Warren County Area" that is available on this site covers only the New Jersey portion of that MSA. For more information on Metropolitan Statistical Areas visit the BLS website for MSA definitions.

The estimated employment will be blank ("non-publishable") when the relative standard error is greater than 50%. Similarly, there will be no wage data in instances where the mean's relative standard error is greater than 30%. Confidentiality requirements dictate that a minimum number of employers have reported employees in an occupation in order to be published in a given area and/or industry. The BLS "Technical Notes" includes a more detailed explanation of the relative standard error.

The OEWS program uses the BLS Employment Cost Index (ECI) to adjust survey data from prior panels before combining them with the current panel's data. The wage updating procedure adjusts each detailed occupation's wage rate, as measured in the earlier panel, according to the average movement of its broader occupational division. The ECI measures the national percentage change in wages by occupational group over the previous year. As such, aging based on the ECI is biased to the degree that state and area wage growth differs from national wage growth and to the extent that wage growth for a specific occupation differs from the growth for the occupational group in which that occupation is found.

The OEWS wage data for the nation and other states are also available on the BLS website. BLS data will utilize the year in which the survey was initiated; the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development website utilizes the publication date. As a result, BLS will publish the same estimates under the prior year.