BLS Labor Market Area Directory
The official list of labor market areas and the counties that compose them, used to align BLS statistics to geography.
The Bureau's Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program publishes labor statistics for labor market areas rather than for counties alone. BLS describes the 2025 Labor Market Area Directory as the comprehensive list of 2020 Census-based metropolitan, micropolitan and small labor market areas together with their geographic compositions — that is, which counties or county equivalents make up each area.
Coverage#
The 2025 directory covers the United States and the District of Columbia. It carries one row per labor market area and county component, roughly 3,200 rows in total.
It is a reference directory, not a statistical series: it contains area codes, area names and their county memberships, and no employment or unemployment values. BLS reissues it when LAUS geography changes, which in practice means after a decennial census or a revision to metropolitan area definitions. The 2025 edition reflects the geography changes BLS documented for 2025.
How we use it#
BLS publishes many of its local series for labor market areas, which are not the geography Birdseye displays. This directory is the authority that tells us which counties each published area covers, so that BLS labor statistics can be placed on the map at all. It supports the unemployment and wage figures sourced from BLS elsewhere in Birdseye.
It produces no metric of its own, and no number shown in the tool comes from it directly.
Considerations#
Labor market areas are defined for statistical purposes and do not always match commuting patterns or a resident's sense of a local job market. Because the definitions change between vintages, a labor market area's composition today may differ from the one used in older BLS releases.
Citation#
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Market Areas, 2025, Local Area Unemployment Statistics program.
BLS materials are in the public domain; BLS asks that it be cited as the source.
References#
- 1U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticshttps://www.bls.gov/lau/laugeo.htm
- 2BLS documented for 2025https://www.bls.gov/lau/geography-and-data-changes-in-2025.htm
- 3BLS asks that it be cited as the sourcehttps://www.bls.gov/bls/linksite.htm