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Covered employment (QCEW) in Bethel Census Area
6,064
as of March 2026 · quarterly · total
▼ 1.4% vs prior · ▼ 2.0% vs a year earlier
Series employment_covered.bethel_census_area.total
History since 2021
Range
Show
Recent values
| Date | Covered employment (QCEW) |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-01 | 6,064 |
| 2026-02-01 | 6,151 |
| 2026-01-01 | 6,125 |
| 2025-12-01 | 6,248 |
| 2025-11-01 | 6,337 |
| 2025-10-01 | 6,390 |
| 2025-09-01 | 6,356 |
| 2025-08-01 | 6,053 |
| 2025-07-01 | 5,901 |
| 2025-06-01 | 6,330 |
| 2025-05-01 | 6,259 |
| 2025-04-01 | 6,197 |
| 2025-03-01 | 6,185 |
| 2025-02-01 | 6,251 |
| 2025-01-01 | 6,194 |
| 2024-12-01 | 6,344 |
| 2024-11-01 | 6,479 |
| 2024-10-01 | 6,532 |
| 2024-09-01 | 6,489 |
| 2024-08-01 | 6,485 |
| 2024-07-01 | 6,585 |
| 2024-06-01 | 6,713 |
| 2024-05-01 | 6,139 |
| 2024-04-01 | 6,113 |
Related series
- Average weekly wageFrom the same employer tax records: total wages divided by covered employment is roughly the average wage, so a jump in one without the others is usually composition — which industries are hiring — rather than raises.
- Total wages
Covered employment (QCEW) elsewhere
- Alaska
- Aleutians East Borough
- Aleutians West Census Area
- Bristol Bay Borough
- Dillingham Census Area
- Kusilvak Census Area
- Lake and Peninsula Borough
- Chugach Census Area
More about Bethel Census Area
About this data
Near-census counts of Alaska jobs and wages straight from unemployment-insurance tax records — the gold standard for borough-level employment and the only reliable wage measure for every borough and industry. Headline series: statewide covered employment (~320k jobs), average weekly wage (~$1,430), and total quarterly payroll (~$6B). Slow (5–6 month lag) but definitive; this is what benchmarks the monthly survey estimates.
Known issues & gotchas
- URL is a template:
https://data.bls.gov/cew/data/api/{year}/{qtr}/area/{area_fips}.csvwith qtr 1–4, e.g..../2024/4/area/02000.csv. Verified live 2026-08-06 with a plain GET — no key, no registration. (This is separate from the BLS timeseries API, which covers QCEW poorly.)qtr=areturns annual averages. - One file per area per quarter: fetch
02000(statewide) plus each borough/census-area FIPS. Alaska FIPS churn is real — Valdez–Cordova (02261) split into Chugach (02063) and Copper River (02066) in 2019 — so drive the area list from a maintained lookup, and don't fail the run when an old FIPS 404s for a new quarter. - Each area file contains all ownership × industry × aggregation-level rows (statewide file is thousands of rows). Filter by
agglvl_code(statewide all-industry total = own_code 0, industry_code "10"; county totals analogous) rather than assuming row order. Keep industry rows for sector series. - Suppressed cells:
disclosure_code = "N"rows carry zeros in the data fields — treat as missing, not zero, especially in small boroughs where whole sectors are suppressed. - A too-early fetch for an unpublished quarter returns 404 (or an empty/HTML respon