BLS OEWS May 2025 · released May 2026
Most Common Jobs
Pick a metro area or state to see which occupations employ the most people there, or pick an occupation to see which metro areas hold the most of its jobs — both by the published employment counts from a single BLS OEWS release.
Methodology
Source. Every employment and wage figure comes from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, May 2025 reference period, released May 2026. The ranking is a straight sort of that release's published employment estimates — nothing is scraped from job postings, modeled, or blended from another source.
What's ranked. "Most common jobs in a city" ranks detailed BLS occupations (specific job titles, not the broader occupation groups BLS also publishes) within the area you pick. "Cities with the most jobs" ranks metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) only — states, territories, and the national figure are excluded from that mode, since the point is comparing cities to each other.
The share column. Share is a plain division of two published figures: the row's employment over the area's published all-occupations total (jobs mode) or over the occupation's published national total (cities mode). It exists because raw counts favor big metros; a share far above a metro's size signals genuine concentration. BLS publishes a formal concentration measure, the location quotient, which this tool doesn't yet ingest — a stated gap, not an estimate.
Suppressed and missing figures. BLS withholds employment estimates that don't meet its publication standards. A suppressed combination simply doesn't appear in the ranking — never estimated or backfilled from a broader geography, because a ranked list mixing directly-published figures with fallback figures would misstate the actual order.
Scope and limitations. Counts measure jobs held in May 2025, not openings, growth, or ease of hiring, and they count jobs rather than people — someone holding two jobs appears twice. Self-employed workers are excluded from OEWS entirely, which materially undercounts occupations with heavy self-employment (many trades, real estate, arts). Metro areas follow OMB metropolitan statistical area definitions.
Informational only, not professional or career advice. Last reviewed: July 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Where do these job counts come from?
Every employment figure is a published estimate from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, May 2025 reference period, released May 2026 — a federal survey of about 1.1 million business establishments. Nothing is scraped from job postings, modeled, or self-reported.
Why do big metros dominate the "cities with the most jobs" list?
Because the list ranks raw published job counts, and larger labor markets have more of nearly everything — New York and Los Angeles top most occupations simply by being the biggest metros. That's why each row also shows its share of the occupation's U.S. jobs: a metro punching far above its population share signals genuine concentration. BLS publishes a formal concentration measure (the location quotient) that this tool may adopt in a future data refresh.
Why is an occupation or city missing from the ranking?
Either BLS did not publish an employment estimate for that combination (it marks some cells as unreleasable), or — in the cities mode — the area isn't a metropolitan statistical area (states and the national row are excluded there, since the point is comparing cities). Nothing is estimated to fill a gap.
Does a high job count mean it's easy to get hired?
No. Employment counts measure how many people currently hold the job, not openings, turnover, or growth. A large occupation can still be hard to enter, and a small one can be hiring aggressively. Treat these figures as the size of the market, and pair them with the wage tools here to see what those jobs actually pay.
Related tools
Rank occupations by pay within a city, or rank cities by pay for one occupation — straight from BLS OEWS, never a self-reported "best jobs" list.
Open tool →Salary Percentile LookupLook up the real pay range for your job in your city — from the 10th to the 90th percentile — and see exactly where your own salary lands on it.
Open tool →Metro ComparisonSame job, different city: see how pay for your occupation changes across metro areas before you relocate or take a remote offer.
Open tool →