LAUS — unemployment, employment and labor force
Local Area Unemployment Statistics series IDs are built from a prefix (LAU), a fifteen-character area code and a two-digit measure code: 03 unemployment rate, 04 unemployment, 05 employment, 06 labor force. The area code encodes the geography type — CT for a city, CN for a county, MT for a metropolitan statistical area, ST for a state — followed by the FIPS or CBSA identifier and zero padding. Example: LAUMT471686000000003 is the unemployment rate for the Chattanooga, TN-GA metropolitan statistical area (MT, state FIPS 47, CBSA 16860). BLS publishes the full area list in its la.area file.
Every one of these series opens directly at data.bls.gov/timeseries/{series ID}, which is the link to put in the report. Local LAUS series are published not seasonally adjusted, so the national comparison should be the not-seasonally-adjusted CPS rate, LNU04000000, rather than the headline seasonally adjusted LNS14000000.
QCEW — employment by industry and at-place employment
The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages publishes open-data CSV files by area and year at data.bls.gov/cew/data/api/{year}/a/area/{area FIPS}.csv for annual averages (or /{quarter}/ for a quarter). The county file contains every industry level for all ownerships; a sector table is the rows at aggregation level 70 (county, NAICS sector). Citing the file URL with the year and area FIPS (for example 47065 for Hamilton County, Tennessee) is a complete reference.
For a ten-year at-place employment series the QCEW timeseries IDs (ENU + area FIPS + data type + size + ownership + industry) can be cited the same way as LAUS IDs.
OEWS — wages by occupation
Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics are published annually for a May reference period. Each metropolitan area and each state nonmetropolitan area has a numeric area code (the CBSA code for metros, for example 16860 for Chattanooga) and a published table at bls.gov/oes/current/oes_{area code}.htm. The citation should name the reference month and year (May 2025) and the area code, since 'current' on the BLS site changes each spring.
Putting it in the report
- Under each table: the program, the vintage (month/year or annual), the series IDs or file URL, and the retrieval date.
- In an appendix: one row per dataset with the identifiers and a clickable link, so the reviewer does not have to reconstruct anything.
- Never cite a series you did not actually pull — if the table was assembled from a spreadsheet, cite the spreadsheet's own source line.
- StudyScribe records these identifiers automatically when it pulls the data and prints them in a Data Verification Appendix at the end of the Front End, with each source line hyperlinked to the publisher's query.
Build the Market Data section from official sources
StudyScribe auto-fills BLS, Census, HUD, FBI and Google data, cites every figure to its source, and exports a Word document ready to drop into your study.
Request access →Frequently asked questions
Where do I find a LAUS area code?
In the BLS la.area file (download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/la/la.area), which lists every area code with its type and name, or by searching the area on the LAUS data tool and reading the series ID it generates.
Why not cite the seasonally adjusted national rate?
City, county and metro LAUS rates are only published not seasonally adjusted. Comparing them with the seasonally adjusted national rate mixes two bases; LNU04000000 is the not-seasonally-adjusted national rate from the CPS.
Is the QCEW CSV the same data as the BLS QCEW tables?
Yes. The open-data CSV files are the BLS's own published QCEW data by area, the same figures shown in its data viewer, in a form that can be cited by URL.
More guides
Browse LIHTC requirements by state →
General reference for affordable-housing analysts; not legal or compliance advice. Always confirm requirements against the current QAP / market study guidelines before submission.