Authoritative source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. May 2024 estimates (the most recent published release; next BLS release scheduled May 15, 2026). 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: 111 occupations (the ones available in the BLS HTML news release table) display BLS-derived figures, marked with a "BLS" tag in the National card. p25 for BLS-sourced occupations is derived as median × 0.74 (the typical BLS p25/median ratio across occupations; production implementation would use the direct p25 from XLSX). The remaining 755 occupations are illustrative approximations of BLS-typical magnitudes pending an XLSX-based data pull (those XLSX files have all 830 occupations with direct p25 values; ingestion requires downloading and parsing the BLS Excel data, which is beyond the current HTML fetch capability).

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.

The wage figures themselves are approximate, illustrative values derived from general BLS OEWS magnitudes with simplified single-factor regional adjustments. A production implementation would pull current BLS OEWS data, which has occupation-specific regional variation more granular than this single-factor approximation. Use this calculator to understand directional patterns and where Direction F would trigger, not as a precision tool.