January 03, 2007 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Telemarketing centers in the U.S.

The five U.S. counties with the greatest number of telemarketing employees supplied a little over 11 percent of the total number of workers in the industry with a combined total of 38,620 in March 2006.

Telemarketing bureau employment, selected counties, March 2006
[Chart data—TXT]

With 10,175 telemarketers accounting for 1.8 percent of its total employment, Bexar County, Texas, which contains San Antonio, tops the list. The telemarketing employees earn an average of $653 per week, more than $100 above the national average for the industry.

Maricopa County, Arizona employs 7,669 people in the telemarketing industry, which is 0.5 percent of its total employment. (Maricopa’s county seat is Phoenix.)

Close behind Maricopa County are Miami-Dade County, Florida and Salt Lake County, Utah, with 7,455 and 7,415 telemarketing employees, respectively.

Rounding out the top five is Tarrant County, Texas, with a little more than half the number of telemarketing industry employees as Bexar. Tarrant County is an urban county located in the north central part of Texas; Fort Worth serves as the county seat.

The BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program produced these data, which are preliminary and subject to revision. Data presented here are for all private-sector workers covered by State and Federal unemployment insurance programs. Find out more in "Telemarketing: Five Industry Centers," (PDF) Issues in Labor Statistics, BLS Summary 06-06.

Happy 10th Birthday, TED!

The very first issue of The Editor's Desk (TED) was posted on September 28, 1998. TED was the first online-only publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 10 years, BLS has been committed to posting a new TED article each business day, for a total of over 2,400 articles so far.

Find out more about the story of TED