cfahlgren1/bls-us-tech-employment-monthly

BLS US Tech Employment Monthly

Monthly US payroll employment for six BLS Current Employment Statistics industry series often used as a proxy for "tech employment," plus a simple monthly aggregate across those six industries.

The dataset includes:

• monthly_tech_employment_components: long-form monthly data for each industry series
• monthly_tech_employment_components_enriched: the same monthly component data plus a mapped top occupation for each industry
• monthly_tech_employment_total: monthly sum across all six component series
• monthly_tech_employment_wide: one row per month with each component and the total as separate columns
• industry_top_occupations_2024: the top 10 occupations for each tracked industry using BLS OEWS May 2024 industry occupation data

All employment values are seasonally adjusted and expressed in thousands of jobs, matching the BLS CES national series. The aggregate is a custom sum of the six component series and is not an official BLS series.

Source Series

These six monthly CES series are included:

Display label	BLS series ID	BLS industry code	Official BLS title
Software Publishers	CES5051320001	50-513200	Software publishers
Custom Computer Programming Services	CES6054151101	60-541511	Custom computer programming services
Computer Systems Design Services	CES6054151201	60-541512	Computer systems design services
Computing Infrastructure, Data Processing, Web Hosting, & Related	CES5051800001	50-518000	Computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, and related services
Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services	CES5051929001	50-519290	Web search portals and all other information services
Streaming Services, Social Networks, & Related	CES5051620001	50-516200	Media streaming distribution services, social networks, and other media networks and content providers

Columns

Component rows include:

• date: month start in YYYY-MM-DD
• year
• month
• category
• bls_series_id
• bls_industry_code
• bls_title
• employment_thousands
• employment_jobs
• yoy_change_thousands
• yoy_change_jobs
• source
• seasonal_adjustment

Enriched component rows also include:

• top_occupation_reference_year
• top_occupation_reference_naics
• top_occupation_reference_industry_title
• top_occupation_mapping_type
• top_occupation_title
• top_occupation_employment
• top_occupation_share_of_top10
• top_occupation_source

Aggregate rows include:

• date
• year
• month
• category
• component_count
• component_count_present
• is_complete_month
• employment_thousands
• employment_jobs
• yoy_change_thousands
• yoy_change_jobs
• source
• seasonal_adjustment

Occupation enrichment rows include:

• category
• oews_reference_year
• oews_reference_naics
• oews_reference_industry_title
• oews_mapping_type
• occupation_rank
• occupation_title
• occupation_employment
• occupation_employment_share_of_top10
• source

Method

1. Fetch each series from the BLS Public Data API v2.
2. If the anonymous API quota is exhausted, fall back to the BLS Series Report form endpoint.
3. Keep monthly observations only.
4. Compute yoy_change_* as the difference from the same month 12 months earlier.
5. Sum the six component series to produce the custom total.
6. Only keep aggregate months where all six component series are present.
7. Add BLS OEWS May 2024 top-occupation metadata for the tracked industries.

Caveats

• These are industry employment series, not occupation or job-role counts.
• The occupation enrichment is annual May 2024 OEWS data, not monthly.
• Custom Computer Programming Services and Computer Systems Design Services are both mapped to the broader OEWS 541500 Computer Systems Design and Related Services occupation profile because BLS does not publish separate OEWS occupation tables for 541511 and 541512.
• Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services is mapped to the broader OEWS 519200 Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services occupation profile.
• CES series definitions changed under the 2022 NAICS revision. BLS provides historical monthly series under the current CES identifiers, but exact long-run category continuity still depends on BLS reclassification choices.
• The custom total is useful for trend analysis, but it should not be treated as an official BLS "tech sector" definition.

Reproduction

Run:

python3 scripts/fetch_bls_tech_employment.py

Primary sources:

• https://www.bls.gov/ces/
• https://www.bls.gov/bls/api_features.htm
• https://www.bls.gov/ces/naics/naics-2022.htm
• https://www.bls.gov/oes/2024/may/ind_emp_chart/ind_emp_chart_data.htm