October 25, 2007 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Employment and wages by occupation for nonmetropolitan areas

Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) data for nonmetropolitan areas are now available. Although BLS has previously released occupational employment and wage estimates for the nation, states, and metropolitan areas, this is the first time that OES data have been released for the parts of the states lying outside of metropolitan areas.

[Chart data—TXT]

As an example of these data, the chart shows hourly mean wages for one occupation, retail salespersons, in all of the nonmetropolitan areas and metropolitan areas for one state, Arizona.

The entire set of nonmetropolitan area data consist of employment, hourly and annual mean wages, and percentile wage estimates by occupation for over 170 nonmetropolitan areas. Most states contain between one and six state-defined nonmetropolitan areas that, with the metropolitan areas, exhaust the geography of the state.

These data are from the Occupational Employment Statistics program. To learn more, see "Nonmetropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wages, 2006" (TXT) (PDF), USDL news release 07-1643. The occupational employment and wage estimates for nonmetropolitan areas, as well as data for metropolitan areas, are available by starting at the webpage at http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcma.htm and by using the data query tool at http://data.bls.gov/oes/search.jsp?data_tool=OES.