WageDex publishes a wage page for every occupation the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures, across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the territories, and several hundred metropolitan areas — built entirely from official BLS data. This page explains how those pages are produced, what standards they are held to, and how to report a number that looks wrong so we can fix it at the source.

How these pages are produced

Every wage figure on WageDex originates in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. We download the raw OEWS data files from the BLS, load them through a documented, version-controlled data pipeline, and render them into occupation, state, and metro pages using shared templates. No wage page is hand-written, and no dollar figure is typed in by an editor. Each median, mean, and percentile wage you see is read directly from the official BLS source record at build time.

Our editorial team is responsible for the parts a pipeline cannot decide on its own: which datasets to use, how each estimate is defined and labeled, what the methodology says, how derived measures (such as a national percentile or a state-versus-national comparison) are computed, which guides and explainers we write, and what we will not publish. The pipeline then applies those decisions uniformly across every occupation, so the rule that governs one wage page governs all of them.

Sourcing standards

We publish only data that comes from official government sources, and we name the source on every page. Our data is:

• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS): a semi-annual establishment survey covering roughly 800 occupations and tens of millions of wage-and-salary jobs. It is the source for every employment count and for the mean, median, and 10th/25th/75th/90th-percentile wage figures shown across the site.
• BLS Standard Occupational Classification (SOC): the official taxonomy that defines each occupation and its title — the framework our occupation pages are organized around.
• BLS Employment Projections, where shown: the official ten-year occupational growth outlook used on career-outlook pages, attributed and dated where it appears.

We do not scrape third-party salary sites, we do not republish self-reported or crowd-sourced pay figures, and we do not generate any wage data ourselves. Where a figure is derived from the official data (for example, a national percentile or a cost-of-living-adjusted comparison), the page links to our methodology, which sets out exactly how it is calculated.

Accuracy and validation

Because the numbers are read straight from BLS files, the most common limitation is the survey itself rather than a transcription error. OEWS estimates reflect the May 2025 reference period, are based on a sample, and are suppressed by the BLS for some occupation-area cells when the underlying count is too small to publish reliably. Our pipeline applies systematic checks before a value is published: it carries the BLS suppression flags through rather than guessing, shows a value as unavailable when the source omits it, and reconciles employment-weighted state and national rollups so the same figure is consistent wherever it appears.

When we find that a displayed number is wrong, we fix the cause, not the symptom. We trace the value back to the data layer, correct the derivation or labeling rule there, and regenerate the affected pages, so the same class of error is resolved everywhere at once rather than patched on a single page.

Editorial independence

WageDex does not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from any employer, recruiter, or organization in exchange for how wages are presented. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense. Advertisers have no influence over which occupations we cover, how a wage is reported, or how any page ranks. The figures are a transparent presentation of the official BLS numbers — not an estimate of what any individual will earn.

Update schedule

The BLS publishes a new OEWS dataset annually, typically in the spring following the reference period. We refresh our database after each new release and re-stamp the affected pages so the published date reflects when the data genuinely changed. Because the survey always lags the present, the reference-period label on every page — "May 2025," named on the page and explained in our methodology — is the primary tool for judging how current a figure is.

Corrections process

If a figure looks wrong, please tell us. We treat data-error reports as a priority and follow the same process every time:

1. Report. Email hello@wagedex.com with the page URL and the figure you are questioning.
2. Verify. We check the value against the official OEWS source record for that occupation and area.
3. Fix at the source. If the figure is wrong on our side, we correct the underlying data or derivation rule and regenerate every page it affects.
4. Note it. If the figure is correct but reflects a known survey limitation — a suppressed cell or a sampling effect — we explain the caveat rather than silently changing it.

Some apparent errors trace back to the BLS estimate itself. When that is the case, we will tell you so and, where possible, point you to the official OEWS source tables so you can verify it directly.

Contact

Questions about our standards, methodology, or a specific figure are welcome at hello@wagedex.com. For more on what the data covers and how it is processed, see our About page and methodology. For how to use this information responsibly when making career and pay decisions, see our disclaimer.