Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) — Lubbock, Taylor & Howard Counties
Net Migration reflects IRS SOI county-to-county filings (Total Migration-US and Foreign) — the net change in tax-filer exemptions between consecutive filing years, inclusive of moves into and out of the country. FRED real GDP and unemployment rate vintages reflect the most recent BEA/BLS releases as of the data badge above.
Between 2019 and 2025, employment in Lubbock went from 140,361 to 152,564, an increase of 8.7%. Average annual wages went from $43,732 to $56,004, rising 28.1% over the same period.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Chart shows the STL trend (raw quarterly values omitted for clarity). Trend computed via STL decomposition (period=4, robust); salary on log scale. Projection extrapolates a linear fit through the last 4 trend points to the current calendar quarter — the horizon shrinks as new QCEW data is published. BLS does not publish seasonally adjusted QCEW — this is a custom estimate.
In 2025 Q3, the county's largest private-sector employers are Health Care & Social Assistance (18.6%), Accommodation & Food Services (17.1%), and Retail Trade (16.3%).
Farm proprietors' income — net annual earnings of self-employed farmers and ranchers, who fall entirely outside QCEW's UI-based coverage. QCEW NAICS 11 captured only 672 wage-and-salary jobs in the latest quarter for this county. For headcount context, USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture reports 2,210 producers operating 1,286 farms in this county across 465,867 acres. The trend below shows the proprietor side of the ag economy in dollars (BEA REA, annual). Latest (2024): $14.9M.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Source: BEA REA CAINC5N (Farm proprietors' income) — Annual
Headcount: USDA 2022 Census of Agriculture — Every 5 years
Each rectangle is a 2-digit NAICS sector; size is total private employment in the displayed quarter. Use the buttons below the chart to view earlier years; the narrative reflects the most recent quarter. Colors group sectors into broad industry domains (matching the Industry Landscape chart). Sectors with suppressed BLS data and 'Unclassified' are excluded.
Each bubble is a 2-digit NAICS industry in 2025 Q3; size reflects total employment. The horizontal split at 0% salary growth and the vertical split at 0% employment growth define four regions. Both growth rates are year over year. Industries expanding on both fronts (jobs and pay): Health Care & Social Assistance, Accommodation & Food Services, and Professional & Technical Services. Admin & Waste Services and Agriculture are losing both jobs and pay growth.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Growth rates compare each industry's employment and average wage in the latest quarter to the same quarter one year ago, per BLS QCEW.
In the most recent quarter (2025 Q3), the county's establishment count contracted by 24 firms — the net of 14 added across growing industries and 42 lost across shrinking ones.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Each black bar sums the QoQ establishment growth across industries that gained firms; the red bar sums the loss across industries that shed firms. The dark line shows the county's BLS-published private establishment net change (own_code=5, agglvl=71) — it does not equal the sum of the bars because BLS suppresses small-cell industries from the per-sector view. The dashed tan benchmark is U.S. private-sector QoQ growth rescaled to the county's private establishment base — like-for-like with the bars. Trailing quarters with no benchmark mean the national figure hasn't been published yet. Q1 typically shows a large negative pattern across counties due to year-end reporting cycles in QCEW. This is not true gross firm openings and closings — BLS does not publish those at the county level.
Between 2019 and 2025, employment in Taylor went from 63,597 to 69,221, an increase of 8.8%. Average annual wages went from $42,484 to $58,552, rising 37.8% over the same period.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Chart shows the STL trend (raw quarterly values omitted for clarity). Trend computed via STL decomposition (period=4, robust); salary on log scale. Projection extrapolates a linear fit through the last 4 trend points to the current calendar quarter — the horizon shrinks as new QCEW data is published. BLS does not publish seasonally adjusted QCEW — this is a custom estimate.
In 2025 Q3, the county's largest private-sector employers are Health Care & Social Assistance (20.1%), Retail Trade (13.9%), and Accommodation & Food Services (12.8%).
Farm proprietors' income — net annual earnings of self-employed farmers and ranchers, who fall entirely outside QCEW's UI-based coverage. QCEW NAICS 11 captured only 104 wage-and-salary jobs in the latest quarter for this county. For headcount context, USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture reports 2,167 producers operating 1,222 farms in this county across 365,679 acres. The trend below shows the proprietor side of the ag economy in dollars (BEA REA, annual). Latest (2024): −$12.1M.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Source: BEA REA CAINC5N (Farm proprietors' income) — Annual
Headcount: USDA 2022 Census of Agriculture — Every 5 years
Each rectangle is a 2-digit NAICS sector; size is total private employment in the displayed quarter. Use the buttons below the chart to view earlier years; the narrative reflects the most recent quarter. Colors group sectors into broad industry domains (matching the Industry Landscape chart). Sectors with suppressed BLS data and 'Unclassified' are excluded.
Each bubble is a 2-digit NAICS industry in 2025 Q3; size reflects total employment. The horizontal split at 0% salary growth and the vertical split at 0% employment growth define four regions. Both growth rates are year over year. Industries expanding on both fronts (jobs and pay): Accommodation & Food Services, Construction, and Wholesale Trade. Retail Trade and Utilities are losing both jobs and pay growth.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Growth rates compare each industry's employment and average wage in the latest quarter to the same quarter one year ago, per BLS QCEW.
In the most recent quarter (2025 Q3), the county's establishment count expanded by 4 firms — the net of 13 added across growing industries and 9 lost across shrinking ones.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Each black bar sums the QoQ establishment growth across industries that gained firms; the red bar sums the loss across industries that shed firms. The dark line shows the county's BLS-published private establishment net change (own_code=5, agglvl=71) — it does not equal the sum of the bars because BLS suppresses small-cell industries from the per-sector view. The dashed tan benchmark is U.S. private-sector QoQ growth rescaled to the county's private establishment base — like-for-like with the bars. Trailing quarters with no benchmark mean the national figure hasn't been published yet. Q1 typically shows a large negative pattern across counties due to year-end reporting cycles in QCEW. This is not true gross firm openings and closings — BLS does not publish those at the county level.
Between 2019 and 2025, employment in Howard went from 13,554 to 11,582, a decrease of 14.5%. Average annual wages went from $52,104 to $65,832, rising 26.3% over the same period.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Chart shows the STL trend (raw quarterly values omitted for clarity). Trend computed via STL decomposition (period=4, robust); salary on log scale. Projection extrapolates a linear fit through the last 4 trend points to the current calendar quarter — the horizon shrinks as new QCEW data is published. BLS does not publish seasonally adjusted QCEW — this is a custom estimate.
In 2025 Q3, the county's largest private-sector employers are Retail Trade (22.6%), Mining (14.7%), and Manufacturing (11.5%).
Farm proprietors' income — net annual earnings of self-employed farmers and ranchers, who fall entirely outside QCEW's UI-based coverage. QCEW NAICS 11 captured only 112 wage-and-salary jobs in the latest quarter for this county. For headcount context, USDA's 2022 Census of Agriculture reports 717 producers operating 407 farms in this county across 575,487 acres. The trend below shows the proprietor side of the ag economy in dollars (BEA REA, annual). Latest (2024): $23.6M.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Source: BEA REA CAINC5N (Farm proprietors' income) — Annual
Headcount: USDA 2022 Census of Agriculture — Every 5 years
Each rectangle is a 2-digit NAICS sector; size is total private employment in the displayed quarter. Use the buttons below the chart to view earlier years; the narrative reflects the most recent quarter. Colors group sectors into broad industry domains (matching the Industry Landscape chart). Sectors with suppressed BLS data and 'Unclassified' are excluded.
Each bubble is a 2-digit NAICS industry in 2025 Q3; size reflects total employment. The horizontal split at 0% salary growth and the vertical split at 0% employment growth define four regions. Both growth rates are year over year. Industries expanding on both fronts (jobs and pay): Other Services and Transportation & Warehousing. Retail Trade and Wholesale Trade are losing both jobs and pay growth.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Growth rates compare each industry's employment and average wage in the latest quarter to the same quarter one year ago, per BLS QCEW.
In the most recent quarter (2025 Q3), the county's establishment count contracted by 5 firms — the net of 3 added across growing industries and 9 lost across shrinking ones.
Source: BLS QCEW — Quarterly
Each black bar sums the QoQ establishment growth across industries that gained firms; the red bar sums the loss across industries that shed firms. The dark line shows the county's BLS-published private establishment net change (own_code=5, agglvl=71) — it does not equal the sum of the bars because BLS suppresses small-cell industries from the per-sector view. The dashed tan benchmark is U.S. private-sector QoQ growth rescaled to the county's private establishment base — like-for-like with the bars. Trailing quarters with no benchmark mean the national figure hasn't been published yet. Q1 typically shows a large negative pattern across counties due to year-end reporting cycles in QCEW. This is not true gross firm openings and closings — BLS does not publish those at the county level.
A plain-language guide to the data series used in this dashboard — what each measure is, why it matters, and where it comes from.
These are the three most populous counties of Texas's 19th congressional district (TX-19). Lubbock County (~316,000 people) anchors the South Plains region. Taylor County (~146,000) contains Abilene. Howard County (~37,000) contains Big Spring and is the third-largest county in TX-19. The remaining 28 counties of the district are smaller and predominantly rural — only a handful (Hale, Gaines, Hockley) exceed 20,000 in population, and BLS QCEW often suppresses industry-level employment for the smaller counties due to disclosure rules. Focusing on the three urban-anchor counties gives the cleanest data while still spanning the district's main economic centers.
The number of jobs reported by employers covered under the unemployment insurance (UI) system. This includes essentially every job outside small-scale agriculture, private households, and self-employment. The figure is the average employment count in the third month of the quarter. Year-over-year (YoY) change compares the latest quarter to the same quarter one year prior.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW). Updated quarterly, with roughly a six-month publication lag.
A count of distinct business locations covered by UI. A single firm operating multiple offices, branches, or stores in the county counts each as a separate establishment. This is a different unit of analysis than “number of firms.”
Source: BLS QCEW.
Total quarterly wages divided by average employment, annualized by multiplying the weekly figure by 52. Covers all workers in the QCEW universe. Because QCEW excludes the self-employed, this measure reflects W-2 payroll workers only.
Source: BLS QCEW.
County-level real gross domestic product in chained 2017 dollars — BEA's measure of total economic output for the county, with inflation removed so figures across years are comparable. BEA publishes county GDP annually each December, so the figure lags by roughly a year.
Note on cross-county comparison: Howard County's real GDP is large relative to its small population because Big Spring sits at the eastern edge of the Permian Basin. Capital-intensive oil and gas extraction, refining, and pipeline activity produce extraordinary output per worker — Howard's per-capita GDP runs roughly five times that of Lubbock or Taylor. By contrast, Lubbock's economy is led by healthcare, higher education, and agriculture services, while Taylor's leans on services, higher education, and the Dyess Air Force Base. Differences in industry composition drive the per-capita GDP spread far more than differences in population do.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Regional Economic Accounts, retrieved via FRED.
The share of the labor force that is jobless and actively looking for work. The county-level series shown here is monthly and not seasonally adjusted — BLS does not publish seasonally adjusted unemployment at the county level. The YoY change is shown in percentage points (pp), with color inverted so that rising unemployment shows as red and falling unemployment shows as green (lower-is-better).
Source: BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS), retrieved via FRED. Updated monthly.
The net change in tax-filer exemptions (a proxy for people) between two consecutive tax filing years. Positive values indicate net inflows; negative values indicate net outflows. Inclusive of both U.S.-domestic and foreign origins/destinations, following the convention used in most regional economic studies. The year label refers to the destination filing year.
Source: Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income (SOI) county-to-county migration data. Updated annually.
The chart shows a smoothed trend line derived from the raw quarterly employment (and average salary) series, with seasonal swings removed. The decomposition uses STL (“Seasonal-Trend decomposition using Loess”) with a four-quarter seasonal period and a robust fit to dampen outliers. BLS does not publish seasonally adjusted QCEW series at the county level — this trend is a custom estimate. For the salary chart, the input is log-transformed because wage growth is multiplicative rather than additive.
Source: BLS QCEW. STL implementation via Python statsmodels.
The dotted segment extends the trend forward to the current calendar quarter using a linear fit through the last four trend points. QCEW data publishes with a ~6-month lag, so the projection bridges the gap between the latest available quarter and the present. The projection horizon shrinks automatically as BLS releases newer data.
Source: Derived internally from the STL trend.
Each rectangle is a 2-digit NAICS industry sector; the area is proportional to total private (own_code=5) employment in the snapshot quarter. Tile color groups the sector into a broader industry domain (Goods-producing, Trade & Logistics, etc.). Sectors with BLS-suppressed data and the “Unclassified” bucket are excluded. The year-selector buttons below the chart let you view earlier snapshots.
Source: BLS QCEW.
Net annual earnings of self-employed farmers and ranchers in the county, reported by BEA in thousands of dollars (shown here in millions). The figure can be negative when operating costs exceed receipts — common in drought years or when commodity prices crash. This series exists precisely to capture the slice of agricultural activity that QCEW misses: QCEW's UI-payroll coverage excludes proprietors entirely. (BEA retired the older CAEMP25N farm-employment-count table from their API after a 2024 restructure, so we use the income series in its place.)
Source: BEA Regional Economic Accounts, table CAINC5N line 71. Updated annually.
Number of farms, number of producers, and total land in farms for the county. “Producers” is the modern USDA term for what was historically called “farm operators” — anyone making management decisions on the farm, which is typically two to three people per farm (the owner plus partners or family members). The Census of Agriculture is conducted every five years; the most recent (2022) was published in February 2024, with the next expected in 2029.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), 2022 Census of Agriculture.
For each 2-digit NAICS industry, the chart plots year-over-year employment growth (x-axis) against year-over-year wage growth (y-axis). Bubble size is proportional to total employment in that sector. Bubble color groups the sector into a broad industry domain. The four quadrants tell distinct stories:
NE: growing in both jobs and pay — the local strengths.
NW: wages rising while jobs shrinking — productivity, automation, or downsizing pressure.
SW: declining on both — sectors in distress.
SE: jobs growing while wages falling — often hospitality and services in expansion mode.
Source: BLS QCEW. Growth rates compare the latest quarter to the same quarter one year prior.
The black bars sum the quarter-over-quarter establishment additions across all industries that grew in that quarter; the red bars sum the losses across industries that shrank. The dark overlay line shows the county's total private-sector (own_code=5) net establishment change as published by BLS, which does not equal the sum of the bars because BLS suppresses small-cell industries from the per-sector view.
Source: BLS QCEW.
The dashed tan line shows the U.S. national private-sector quarter-over-quarter establishment growth rate, rescaled to the county's establishment base. This converts a national percentage change into an apples-to-apples count: “how many establishments would this county have added if it had grown at the national rate this quarter?” Trailing quarters with no benchmark mean the national figure hasn't been published yet.
Source: Derived from U.S. QCEW national aggregate (area code US000).
Q1 typically shows a large negative establishment-count pattern across all counties. This is an artifact of QCEW's year-end reporting cycle: businesses that closed during Q4 of the prior year are formally removed from the register in Q1. The chart is therefore not a clean measure of “gross firm openings and closings” — BLS does not publish that at the county level.
The dashboard is regenerated automatically every Monday at 1:00 AM Eastern via a GitHub Actions workflow. The action pulls fresh data from BLS QCEW, FRED, IRS SOI, and BEA, regenerates the static HTML pages, and pushes the result to GitHub Pages. New QCEW quarters appear about six months after the quarter ends; FRED unemployment is monthly; IRS migration and BEA income are annual.