About WageDepth

What is WageDepth?

WageDepth is a salary and wage lookup tool that makes Bureau of Labor Statistics data easy to explore. We publish median salaries, wage distributions, employment counts, and year-over-year trends for over 800 occupations — broken down by every US state and hundreds of metropolitan areas. Whether you're negotiating a salary, researching a career change, or analyzing a local labor market, WageDepth gives you the numbers in plain language.

Where does the data come from?

All wage data comes from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program — a federal survey conducted annually by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in cooperation with state workforce agencies. The OEWS program collects data from approximately 1.1 million business establishments across the country, making it one of the most comprehensive employment and wage surveys in existence.

WageDepth downloads the annual OEWS bulk release, normalizes it, and loads it into a searchable database. We do not modify, estimate, or interpolate the underlying figures — what you see is what BLS reported.

What does the data include?

For each occupation × geography combination, WageDepth publishes:

• —Median and mean annual wages — the midpoint and average salary across all workers in the occupation
• —Hourly wage equivalents — median and mean hourly rates where available
• —Wage percentiles — 10th, 25th, 75th, and 90th percentile salaries, showing the full distribution
• —Employment counts — estimated number of workers in each occupation and area
• —Historical trend data — year-over-year wage changes from 2019 through 2024

Why are some values missing?

BLS suppresses certain wage values to protect the confidentiality of survey respondents. A value shown as "—" means BLS did not publish a figure for that occupation and area combination — typically because employment was below 10 workers, or because the data did not meet publication standards. This is expected and reflects the underlying survey, not a gap in our data.

How current is the data?

The most recent data on WageDepth is from the 2024 BLS OEWS release, which reflects wages collected during the reference period of May 2024. BLS publishes updated estimates annually, and WageDepth is updated each year when the new release becomes available. Historical data from 2019 through 2023 is also retained for trend analysis.

Limitations

OEWS wages are straight-time wages only — they do not include overtime pay, tips, bonuses, or benefits. They also represent a snapshot of wages at a point in time and may not reflect very recent market movements. For occupations with high geographic mobility or rapidly changing demand (software engineering, healthcare, etc.), actual market wages may differ from what BLS reports. We recommend treating these figures as a reference benchmark, not a precise salary expectation.