We The People

Authoritative source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. May 2025 estimates (the most recent published release). Data retrieved May 13, 2026 from bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.t01.htm. Full XLSX downloads: bls.gov/oes/tables.htm.

What is BLS-sourced vs. illustrative in this calculator: 785 of the 866 occupations display real BLS OEWS May 2025 national figures, marked with a "BLS" tag in the National card. For these, the national 25th-percentile is read DIRECTLY from the BLS XLSX (the A_PCT25 column) — the earlier median × 0.74 approximation has been retired. The remaining 81 occupations are illustrative approximations (71, SOC codes with no BLS May 2025 detailed match), held at prior value and flagged for a SOC-restructure cleanup (7, e.g. the Database Administrator/Architect split and railroad-family renumbering), or BLS-suppressed (3). The verbatim BLS source file is archived with a SHA-256 checksum; see the data-archive snapshot.

Regional adjustment factors: remain illustrative single-factor approximations per region in this version. BLS publishes occupation-specific MSA-level p25 values directly in the MSA XLSX (oesm24ma.zip). Production implementation should pull occupation × region pairs directly from that file rather than apply a single regional factor. See 06_Presentation_Materials/06_Data_Sources_And_Methodology.docx for the full production data pipeline specification.

The list of occupations approximates the full BLS 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) detailed catalog (866 occupations across 23 major groups). The list of regions approximates the full BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) geographic coverage (400 metropolitan statistical areas + 52 state non-metropolitan area entries). Specific occupation titles, SOC codes, or MSA names may have minor variations from official BLS publications due to construction methodology; a production implementation would use BLS-published catalogs directly.

Both the national and regional 25th-percentile figures are real BLS OEWS May 2025 values. National wages are read directly from the national XLSX; regional wages are real occupation-by-area 25th-percentiles from the BLS metropolitan and nonmetropolitan files, served per region and shown with a BLS AREA tag when a real occupation-area value is used. For 22 regions that could not be cleanly matched to a single BLS area (nested in a larger metro, renamed, or with no BLS nonmetropolitan territory), an estimated regional factor is used instead, tagged EST FACTOR. Under the real regional data, Direction F triggers only in Puerto Rico regions; no mainland region falls below the 70% threshold.