The numbers behind work in America.
Compare wages, employment, state wage floors, unemployment provisions, and worker-rights sources—with the period and verification date kept beside the finding.
Start with a question, not a dashboard.
Every route pairs the number with a definition, a comparison, a source period, and a verification date.
National distributions and complete state comparisons for high-employment occupations.
StatesHow does the local market differ?Employment, wage levels, wage floors, overtime summaries, and benefits.
Worker rightsWhich primary rule applies?Federal baselines, state variation, effective dates, and agency links.
Missing evidence never becomes a page.
LaborBrief publishes an occupation profile only when at least eight national BLS fields are present. A state-occupation comparison requires employment, jobs per 1,000, location quotient, annual mean, annual median, and hourly mean. The current data file contains 5,093 candidate cells; 235 are incomplete or suppressed and remain unpublished.
The release is BLS OEWS, May 2025. Its survey estimates describe wage-and-salary employment rather than live vacancies, employer reviews, or individual offers. The site does not list jobs, invent employers, estimate suppressed cells, or convert a missing legal fact into a broad claim.
Legal pages follow a parallel rule. A summary identifies a federal baseline, explains where state law can differ, and links to primary publications. If a current state-specific fact has not been verified, the field says “not available.” This is general information and not legal advice.
Use How we verify for the complete workflow, Sources for release links, the glossary for technical definitions, and the guide library for reproducible comparison methods.
Three ways to read the labor market.
Scale, pay, and concentration are distinct. Strong analysis keeps them separate before combining them.