Methodology
Every number on this site is reproduced from a named public source, with the source's own identifier printed beside it. Nothing is estimated, modelled or typed in by hand.
The headcount: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics
The primary figure on each page is the employment estimate from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, for May 2025, by state and detailed occupation. The OEWS is a semi-annual survey of about 1.1 million establishments, and its May release is the standard federal count of how many people work in each occupation in each state. We read the figures through the BLS public API (api.bls.gov, v2) on September 21, 2026. The series identifier for every figure is printed in the source line of its page, so any number can be checked against BLS directly.
Each profession is mapped to one Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code, shown on its page. Where a profession spans several SOC codes, we use the code that best matches the licensed title and say so in the occupation name (for example "Dentists, General" rather than all dental specialties).
Employment is not the same as licences
An employment estimate counts people working in the occupation at the survey date. A state licence roll counts people holding a licence, which includes the retired, the inactive, people working in another field, and people licensed in more than one state. Licence rolls are therefore usually larger, sometimes by a wide margin, and they are published by each state on its own schedule and in its own format. We show the BLS figure because it is measured the same way in every state and every year. Where a page quotes a licence-roll figure it names the board and the date.
Suppressed and missing states
BLS withholds an estimate when it fails a quality or confidentiality test, most often for small occupations in small states. Those states are listed as having no published estimate and are excluded from rankings and from the U.S. sum. The U.S. figure on each profession page is the sum of the published state estimates, which is why it can differ from the national estimate BLS publishes separately.
Per-capita rates
Rates per 100,000 residents divide the employment estimate by the state's 2020 Census resident population (U.S. Census Bureau apportionment counts) and multiply by 100,000. Using one fixed population base keeps the rates comparable across professions on this site.
Published business emails
Each page also reports how many people in the profession and state have a business email address published on a licence register, a practice website or a professional directory. That count is read from the database behind Email Lists USA, which collects published business contact details for licensed professions, as of September 21, 2026. It is a count of people who publish a work address, it can exceed the employment estimate where licence registers list inactive licensees, and it is shown for what it is: a measure of how reachable a profession is, not of its size.
Updates
BLS publishes the state estimates once a year in spring. This site is rebuilt when a new release appears and whenever the published-email counts are refreshed. The build date is printed in the footer of every page.
Reuse
Tables on this site may be reproduced with attribution to Profession Count and to the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the underlying source. Corrections and questions: hello@professioncount.com.