Microproduct Data GuideIntermediate

BLS QCEW County High-Level Archives

BLS county employment and wage annual-average archives for comparing local labor-market conditions.

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At a Glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Tiny · 0.03–0.05 GB
Formats
ZIP, XLSX
Access
Download
API Key
Not Required
Provider
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Updates
Quarterly
Last Verified
Sep 28, 2026
Source Type
Government Source
Data Terms
BLS publications are public domain; cite BLS and keep the release year and industry classification.
  • Python Syntax Checked

From Source to Product Signal

Test a Product Idea in Four Steps

BLS publishes County High-Level Excel ZIPs apart from its Public Data API. Start with one row from the 2025 annual-average workbook; HouseHunter also pins 2024. QCEW covers jobs subject to unemployment-insurance laws, not every worker or current job openings.

1

Check the Setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • An internet connection
  • The requests and openpyxl Python packages
2

Access the Data

  1. 1.Read the QCEW file layout and BLS public-domain notice.
  2. 2.Download the exact 2025 County High-Level annual archive.
  3. 3.Inspect the area, ownership, industry, employment, and wage columns.
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3

Run the Python Example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install requests openpyxl

import io
import itertools
import zipfile
import requests
from openpyxl import load_workbook

url = "https://data.bls.gov/cew/data/files/2025/xls/2025_all_county_high_level.zip"
response = requests.get(url, timeout=60)
response.raise_for_status()
with zipfile.ZipFile(io.BytesIO(response.content)) as archive:
    name = next(n for n in archive.namelist() if n.endswith("allhlcn25.xlsx"))
    workbook = load_workbook(io.BytesIO(archive.read(name)), read_only=True, data_only=True)
for row in itertools.islice(workbook.active.values, 3):
    print(row[:6])
workbook.close()
4

Test a Useful Signal

Compare County Employment

Compare fixed-year county employment and wages at one ownership and industry grain.

  1. 01Select one county and industry from the high-level workbook.
  2. 02Compare annual-average employment and wages at the same grain.
  3. 03Explain which workers the QCEW coverage omits.

Related Datasets

Dataset Details

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is a government source. Last verified 2026-09-28. Temporal coverage: annual QCEW county averages; HouseHunter pins final 2024 and 2025 archives.

Data Types

Tabular

Formats

ZIPXLSX

Provider

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Data Terms

BLS publications are public domain; cite BLS and keep the release year and industry classification.

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