Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI)

Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) is produced by the U.S. Census Bureau Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program. It delivers local labor-market statistics built from linked employer-employee administrative records: employment levels, hires, separations, job creation and destruction, turnover, and earnings, broken down by geography (national, state, metro, county), industry, and worker demographics (sex, age group, race, ethnicity, education), and by firm age and firm size. The data is free and public. The LEHD bulk flat-file path used here needs no API key. Used in, for example, Johnston-Ross, Ma & Puri, where county-level QWI startup employment (firm age 0 to 1) and total employment feed the regional-recovery analysis.

This page documents the LEHD flat-file bulk download path. A separate Census Bureau page covers the api.census.gov API route (key required) and the Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) product; this page does not duplicate BDS material.

• Cost: free, public.
• API key: none required for the LEHD bulk files. The api.census.gov QWI API route requires a free key (returns “Missing Key” without one).
• Coverage: quarterly, by state (with national aggregates), from the early 1990s onward, though state start dates differ.
• Home: https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/

Access

The LEHD flat files live under https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/qwi/latest_release/. Each subdirectory corresponds to a geography: us/ for national aggregates, then one folder per state FIPS abbreviation (ak/, al/, …, wy/). Within each folder, multiple files cover different demographic and firm-characteristic breakdowns. No authentication is required.

Download the U.S. national, seasonally adjusted, firm-age breakdown file:

# US national QWI file: seasonally adjusted, by firm age, no key
curl -sL -o qwi_us.csv.gz \
  "https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/qwi/latest_release/us/qwi_us_sa_fa_gn_ns_op_u.csv.gz"
gzip -dc qwi_us.csv.gz | head

The file is approximately 19 MB compressed and contains 266,256 rows.

Filename scheme

Files follow the pattern:

qwi_<geo>_<seasonadj>_<firmchar>_<geo_level>_<raceeth>_<owner>_<ratevar>.csv.gz

Confirmed segment codes from the verified file above and LEHD documentation:

Position	Code	Meaning
<geo>	us, ca, tx, …	Geography (national or 2-letter state abbreviation)
<seasonadj>	sa	Seasonally adjusted
<seasonadj>	se	Seasonally extracted (not seasonally adjusted)
<firmchar>	fa	By firm age
<firmchar>	fs	By firm size
<firmchar>	f	No firm-characteristic detail
<geo_level>	gn	National/state aggregate level
<raceeth>	ns	No race/ethnicity detail
<raceeth>	rs	Race/ethnicity detail included
<owner>	op	Private ownership

List the directory index to see every available file and confirm the exact code meanings for your vintage against the LEHD schema documentation at https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/schema/latest/lehd_public_use_schema.pdf rather than guessing. Segment codes can change across schema versions.

Load in Python

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv(
    "qwi_us.csv.gz",
    dtype=str,        # read everything as str first; cast after inspecting
    compression="gzip",
    low_memory=False,
)

# Key identifier columns:
# periodicity, seasonadj, geo_level, geography, ind_level, industry,
# ownercode, sex, agegrp, race, ethnicity, education, firmage, firmsize,
# year, quarter, agg_level

# Then the indicator columns:
# Emp, EmpEnd, HirA, Sep, FrmJbGn, FrmJbLs, EarnBeg, Payroll, ...
# Each has an s-prefixed status/flag twin, e.g. sEmp, sHirA, sSep

# Convert numeric indicators after filtering for acceptable status flags
numeric_indicators = ["Emp", "EmpEnd", "HirA", "Sep",
                       "FrmJbGn", "FrmJbLs", "EarnBeg", "Payroll"]
df[numeric_indicators] = df[numeric_indicators].apply(
    pd.to_numeric, errors="coerce"
)

The s-prefixed twin of each indicator (e.g. sEmp alongside Emp) encodes a data-quality and suppression status code for that cell. Cells are blank or hold a sentinel value (e.g. -1) where suppressed. These are not zeros and must not be treated as zeros. Read the status flags and drop or flag suppressed cells before any analysis.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

• The api.census.gov QWI API returns “Missing Key” without a free API key. The LEHD flat files used here need no key. If you want zero credentials, use the LEHD bulk route; if you use the Census API, register for a free key at https://www.census.gov/data/developers.html.
• Suppressed cells are not zeros. Cells are suppressed or fuzzed for confidentiality. Blank cells and sentinel values (e.g. -1) in indicator columns indicate suppression, not a true zero. Each indicator has an s-prefixed status flag column you must read before treating any value as valid data.
• State coverage start dates differ. States joined the LEHD program in different years, so a national panel has ragged left edges by state. A series starting in 1990 for some states may start in 1995 or later for others. Massachusetts has historically been absent from LEHD.
• Firm-age and firm-size breakdowns are only in files that carry that dimension. The filename encodes whether firm age or firm size is included. Requesting firm-age detail from a file without the fa segment returns nothing; pick the correct file for your breakdown.
• QWI counts jobs and worker flows, not firm financials. Employment, hires, separations, and earnings are from administrative records. QWI does not contain revenue, assets, or profitability. It is also not the same as BDS firm counts (see the Census Bureau page).
• Seasonal adjustment is a file-level choice. Seasonally adjusted (sa) and seasonally extracted (se) series are in separate files. Do not mix them in one panel series.
• Industry and geography codes follow LEHD conventions. The industry column uses NAICS codes at varying levels of aggregation (controlled by ind_level). The geography column uses FIPS codes. Confirm the aggregation level in agg_level before joining to external sources.

Key indicators

Column	Description
Emp	Beginning-of-quarter employment
EmpEnd	End-of-quarter employment
HirA	Total hires (accessions)
Sep	Total separations
FrmJbGn	Firm job gains
FrmJbLs	Firm job losses
EarnBeg	Average monthly earnings for workers employed at beginning of quarter
Payroll	Total payroll

Geography levels

Level	Description
National	us/ subdirectory
State	One subdirectory per state (e.g. ca/, tx/)
Metro (MSA/CBSA)	Included within state files, geo_level = M
County	Included within state files, geo_level = C
WIA/workforce area	Included within state files, geo_level = W

Citation

U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program, Quarterly Workforce Indicators, latest release, retrieved from https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/qwi/latest_release/, accessed 2026-06-09.

Record the schema version, the specific file path, and the seasonal-adjustment and firm-characteristic segments so the pull is reproducible.