About the data

Jobs, unemployment, wage and price figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The Costs & prices section also uses the Energy Information Administration (EIA), Zillow, Freddie Mac, KFF and Joint Economic Committee Democrats, and metro district labels use Census Bureau files; each tile, card and table links to its source. The site checks for new data several times each weekday and refreshes a dataset as soon as new numbers are posted.

How changes are measured

When you pick a time period, changes are measured from the month before the start month through the end month. Picking “Jan 2025 – Aug 2026” counts every job added or lost during those 20 months, including January’s. Picking a single month shows that month’s change, which matches the headline number in the monthly jobs report.

Sources

• National jobs and wages: Current Employment Statistics (CES), the establishment survey in the monthly Employment Situation report. Seasonally adjusted. Released the first Friday of most months.
• National unemployment by group: Current Population Survey (CPS), the household survey in the same report. Seasonally adjusted.
• State jobs: State and Metro Area Employment (CES-SM), seasonally adjusted. State unemployment: Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS), seasonally adjusted. Both come out in the State Employment and Unemployment release, about two weeks after the national report.
• Inflation: Consumer Price Index. National real wages follow BLS’s own Real Earnings method: all-worker wages are adjusted with CPI-U and production & nonsupervisory wages with CPI-W (both seasonally adjusted).
• State wages: Average hourly earnings of all private employees. BLS publishes these only without seasonal adjustment and does not publish a production & nonsupervisory series for most states. They are adjusted for inflation using the CPI-U for the state’s Census division (one of nine, such as East North Central for Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin). State real pay is measured over the same timeframe as the rest of the site: from the month before the period starts to the latest month with both pay and prices. Neither series is seasonally adjusted, so this is the observed change in inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings between those two months and can include seasonal differences between them. The chart compares each month with the same month a year earlier (which removes seasonal effects) and counts the months in which prices rose faster than pay. National wages are seasonally adjusted and follow the time period directly.
• Metro areas: total jobs from State and Metro Area Employment, seasonally adjusted (BLS does not seasonally adjust metro industry detail, so only totals are shown). Metro unemployment rates (Local Area Unemployment Statistics) are not seasonally adjusted, so each is compared with the same month a year earlier. Metro and state pay by industry are not shown: BLS publishes them, but the samples are small enough that year-to-year changes are mostly noise. Metro data comes out in a separate BLS release a week or two after the state release, and the latest month is preliminary. A metro area that crosses state lines is listed on the page of every state it includes, and its figures cover the whole metro area. The congressional districts after each metro name are the districts current House members represent (119th Congress) that include any part of the metro area, from the Census Bureau’s district-to-county crosswalk and the 2023 metro area definitions. Some states have adopted new district maps for the 2026 elections; those are not reflected here.
• Costs & prices: Price changes come from the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U; seasonally adjusted for the U.S.; on state pages, the CPI for the state’s Census division, not seasonally adjusted, since BLS does not publish CPI for individual states. JEC Democrats use the same division-level CPI for their state estimates. Household spending, budget weights and grocery average prices are published only for the four Census regions, so state pages use the region for those). Dollar figures follow the Senate Banking Committee’s method: average household spending from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey (for the year the period starts, or the latest year available) divided by 12, times the price change since the month before the period, for each month, added up. October 2025, when BLS published no CPI because of the shutdown, is the midpoint of September and November. Whenever the period starts in January 2025, the total shown is JEC Democrats’ published estimate (labeled with the month it runs through) for the U.S. or the state; JEC Democrats say they use the method JEC Republicans published in 2022 (Census-division CPI applied to state household spending built from BEA consumption data), which gives higher dollar figures than this site’s own estimate from BLS spending data. This site shows JEC’s number as JEC’s estimate and does not reproduce it; the monthly cost increase and other dollar figures are this site’s own estimates.
• Cost highlights: gasoline and diesel from EIA weekly retail prices (U.S., regions, and the nine states EIA publishes separately); when the period runs to the latest month, prices are measured to the latest week, with the running total counting full months only. Diesel is also shown as the cost of filling a 30-gallon work-truck tank. Electricity rates and average bills from EIA’s monthly state data (sales ÷ customers × rate). Home heating: each state’s average residential natural gas bill (EIA, annual) carried forward by the national CPI for utility gas (seasonally adjusted). Groceries from CPI food at home and BLS average prices; restaurants and takeout from CPI food away from home. Water, sewer and trash; car repair and maintenance; and doctors, dentists and hospitals use national CPI, since BLS does not publish those prices below the national level. Rent from the Zillow Observed Rent Index (state figures are county rents weighted by renter households); mortgage payments on the typical home from the Zillow Home Value Index and Freddie Mac’s 30-year rate (20% down; the latest weekly rate for the current payment); ACA benchmark premiums by state from KFF. Health premiums are annual and compare plan years rather than following the time slider. Dollar figures for CPI-based rows use average household spending from the Consumer Expenditure Survey.
• Union vs. nonunion: Weekly pay and state membership rates come from the annual Union Members report (Current Population Survey, released each January). Employer spending on wages and benefits per hour worked comes from Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (quarterly, private industry). Access to benefits comes from the National Compensation Survey (annual, March reference period, private industry). These are straight comparisons that don’t adjust for differences in industry, occupation or location. BLS does not publish union vs. nonunion pay for individual states.

Things to know

• The two most recent months of payroll data are preliminary and are revised in the following two reports. Each February, BLS also benchmarks the prior year’s payroll levels.
• There is no October 2025 data for the household survey or CPI, because the federal government shutdown stopped data collection. When a period starts or ends on a missing month, the nearest earlier month is used and marked.
• Detailed industries can have large sampling error. Small monthly changes in small industries are often not statistically significant.