A data reporting shift, accelerated by the pandemic, has been quietly undercounting Greater Omaha’s employment base. Here is what the full picture looks like.
THE HEADLINE NUMBER
| 552,241 Omaha CSA jobs (reported data) +2.1% growth since 2019 | 593,292 Omaha CSA jobs (with County Not Reported) +5.4% growth since 2019 | +41,051 Jobs previously uncounted in regional totals |
2025 figures | Source: Lightcast
Greater Omaha’s workforce is 41,000 jobs larger than standard labor market data shows. This is not a miscalculation, rounding error, or projection. It is a documented undercount created by a shift in how employers report employment data, one that accelerated sharply during the pandemic and has permanently changed the way jobs are counted at the local level.
At the Greater Omaha Chamber, we track workforce data closely. It’s one of the most important signals we share with site selectors, corporate real estate teams, and economic development partners evaluating the region. So when our data recently showed meaningful declines in Finance & Insurance, Business & Professional Services, and other high-wage sectors between 2019 and 2025, we paid attention.
The numbers, on the surface, were troubling. Finance & Insurance appeared to have lost more than 6,400 jobs, a 17% decline. Business, Professional & Information Services was down 3,500 jobs. But something didn’t add up. When we looked at the same sectors at the state level, Nebraska overall showed flat or growing employment in those same industries. How could Greater Omaha be declining while the state held steady or grew, given that Omaha is the dominant economic engine of Nebraska?
The answer turned out to be a data reporting issue with a name: “County Not Reported.”
What Is “County Not Reported”?
One source of employment data in the United States is compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which requires employers to report the geographic location of their workers. For most of labor market history, this meant reporting employment by county, the specific location where work was performed.
Starting around 2016, but with a sharp acceleration beginning in 2020, a growing number of employers, particularly larger multi-location companies, began reporting their Nebraska workforce at the state level without designating a specific county. These jobs show up in labor market datasets under a classification called “Nebraska, County Not Reported.” They’re real jobs, held by real workers. They just don’t have a county address.
The reason for the shift is not hard to understand: the pandemic changed where work happens. When employees began working from home at scale in 2020, many companies found it operationally impractical, or simply chose not, to track which county each employee was in on any given day. Remote and hybrid work arrangements made the concept of a fixed county work location increasingly difficult to enforce. That reporting change stuck.
Lightcast, our labor market data provider, has confirmed this phenomenon in their own analysis. The County Not Reported category is not a data error. It is a structural shift in how employment is being reported, and it has real consequences for how regions like Greater Omaha appear in the data.
“Multiple NAICS subsectors show near mirror-image swaps between Omaha and “county not reported,” strongly indicating reporting or county assignment changes rather than broad structural economic contraction.”
Lightcast
The Numbers Behind the Shift
To understand the scale of this change, consider the trajectory of the County Not Reported category for Nebraska. In 2019, roughly 22,000 jobs statewide were reported without a county designation. By 2025, that number had grown to just over 41,000, an 86% increase representing nearly 19,000 jobs. The Omaha CSA, by comparison, showed reported growth of about 11,600 jobs over the same period (throughout this analysis, the Omaha CSA refers to the Omaha-Council Bluffs Metropolitan Statistical Area plus the Fremont Micropolitan Statistical Area (Dodge County). Fremont is a natural part of the Omaha labor shed, and its numbers are included in all figures cited here). It is worth noting that Nebraska’s statewide employment figures, which include the County Not Reported category, tell a much stronger story than the Omaha CSA reported figures alone, precisely because the state totals capture what the county-level data misses.
The County Not Reported category begins a steep upward climb starting around 2016 and spikes sharply in 2020 as pandemic-era remote work took hold.
| +86% County Not Reported growth, 2019-2025 | 18,957 New jobs in County Not Reported category | $121K Average annual earnings, CNR jobs | 41,051 Total County Not Reported jobs, 2025 |
White-Collar Jobs Are Driving the Shift
Perhaps the most telling aspect of the County Not Reported data is which industries dominate it. These are not manufacturing jobs, hospitality positions, or retail roles. These are overwhelmingly professional, knowledge-based, and financial services jobs, exactly the sectors that transitioned most aggressively to remote and hybrid work.
| Industry | 2019 Jobs | 2025 Jobs | Change | % Change |
| Finance and Insurance | 2,093 | 7,926 | +5,833 | 279% |
| Admin & Support Services | 4,569 | 6,966 | +2,397 | 52% |
| Professional, Scientific & Technical Services | 3,873 | 6,831 | +2,958 | 76% |
| Information | 670 | 2,584 | +1,914 | 286% |
| Management of Companies and Enterprises | 743 | 1,960 | +1,217 | 164% |
| Construction | 2,263 | 3,697 | +1,434 | 63% |
Source: Lightcast
Finance and Insurance leads the category with a 279% increase, from 2,093 jobs in 2019 to 7,926 in 2025. The Information sector grew by 286%. Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services grew by 76%. These are high-wage, high-value positions concentrated in exactly the kind of companies that have large Omaha footprints: insurance carriers, financial institutions, technology firms, and professional services organizations.
The average annual earnings of County Not Reported workers in Nebraska ($121,380) is meaningfully higher than the Omaha CSA average of $78,382. These are not peripheral jobs. They are among the highest-compensating positions in the regional economy.
Why We’re Confident These Are Omaha Jobs
A fair question for any site selector to ask is: how do we know these County Not Reported jobs are in the Omaha metro, rather than distributed across rural Nebraska or other markets?
The answer lies in the nature of the industries involved, the economic geography of the state, and most compellingly, what the data on actual employers tells us.
The majority of Nebraska’s workforce is concentrated in just a few areas of the state. The Omaha CSA accounts for roughly 55% of total Nebraska employment, with Lincoln and a handful of other communities accounting for much of the balance. The industries driving County Not Reported growth, including financial services, professional services, information technology, and corporate management, have a large presence in the Omaha metro and are the most likely source of workers choosing where to live and work across the region.
But we have more than geography on our side. The number of payrolled business establishments in the Omaha CSA grew from 8,653 in 2019 to 9,958 in 2025, a net gain of more than 1,300 employer locations. More businesses operating in the region is a direct indicator that the underlying economy is expanding. Critically, the number of establishments reporting in the County Not Reported category for Nebraska grew even faster over the same period, growing from 3,506 firms in 2019 to 8,350 in 2025, a 138% increase. A portion of these firms represent companies outside of Nebraska with remote employees in Nebraska. These firms file to create a presence in the state, but without a physical address.
| Region | 2019 Establishments | 2025 Establishments | Change |
| Omaha CSA | 8,653 | 9,958 | +1,305 (+15%) |
| County Not Reported (Nebraska) | 3,506 | 8,350 | +4,844 (+138%) |
| Balance of Nebraska | ~8,000 | 8,511 | +511 (+6%) |
Source: Lightcast
Compare that to the rest of Nebraska, meaning all counties excluding the Omaha CSA and the County Not Reported category. That group grew from roughly 8,000 establishments to 8,511, a modest 6% increase. The contrast is telling: while rural and small-metro Nebraska added a handful of new employers, the Omaha CSA and the County Not Reported category both saw significant establishment growth. The firms without county designations are growing at a rate consistent with Omaha’s expansion, not with the stagnant establishment counts seen elsewhere in the state.
Greater Omaha also has a well-established pattern of workers commuting between locations, particularly in these professional sectors. A business establishment in Omaha may employ workers who live in Lincoln or other nearby communities, making it even more difficult for employers to assign a single county to each position. This further explains why professional, financial, and information services firms are the most represented in the County Not Reported category, and reinforces our confidence that these jobs are tied to the Omaha regional economy. Taken together, these data points point decisively in the same direction: the Omaha CSA is expanding, the companies reporting without county designations are growing their Nebraska workforces, and the Balance of Nebraska is not the source of that growth. The County Not Reported jobs belong to Greater Omaha.
The Complete Picture: 593,000 Jobs and Growing
When we combine Omaha CSA reported employment with the County Not Reported figures, a substantially more accurate and more compelling picture of the regional economy emerges. As of 2025, the Omaha CSA has 552,241 jobs in county-reported data. Add the County Not Reported total, and the real employment base is 593,292, representing a regional economy that has been significantly undercounted. Put in percentage terms: reported-only employment grew 2.1% from 2019 to 2025, while the combined figure grew 5.4% over the same period, more than two and a half times the reported rate.
The growth story is equally important. Between 2019 and 2025, the Omaha CSA added approximately 11,600 jobs in reported data. Combined with the nearly 19,000 jobs that appeared in the County Not Reported category over that same period, the region’s actual employment growth is closer to 30,600 jobs. That’s more than two and a half times what the reported figures alone would suggest, and it reflects a labor market that has been consistently adding high-wage, knowledge-economy positions throughout the post-pandemic period.
The real employment picture, 2019 to 2025:
| Reported-only job growth ~11,600 jobsWhat conventional data shows (+2.1%) | Combined job growth (with CNR) ~30,600 jobsThe complete picture (+5.4%) |
At the sector level, the combined data transforms several apparent declines into growth stories across the most strategically important industries.
| Sector | Reported Change (2019-2025) | County Not Reported Change | Combined Change |
| Finance & Insurance | -7,734 (-21%) | +6,973 (+333%) | -761 (-2%) |
| Information | -1,547 (-14%) | +2,406 (+359%) | +859 (+8%) |
| Professional, Scientific & Technical Services | +1,000 (+4%) | +3,249 (+84%) | +4,249 (+15%) |
| Management of Companies | -1,297 (-8%) | +1,353 (+182%) | +56 (+0%) |
| Admin & Business Support Services | -2,161 (-7%) | +3,156 (+69%) | +995 (+3%) |
Source: Lightcast; County Not Reported allocations based on Nebraska statewide data
The transformation is striking. What appeared to be a 21% decline in Finance & Insurance becomes a modest 2% dip. What looked like a 14% decline in Information becomes an 8% gain. Professional Services, already positive in reported data, shows a robust 15% increase when the full picture is included.
What This Means for How We Share Data
This analysis has prompted us to update the workforce data we publish and share with site selectors and economic development partners. Going forward, Greater Omaha Chamber workforce data will include County Not Reported information alongside traditional county-reported figures. We believe this combined methodology provides a more accurate representation of the region’s true economic scale and trajectory.
We are also working with Lightcast to apply consistent methodological treatment to this data over time, so that trend comparisons remain valid and transparent. Where County Not Reported figures are included, they will be clearly labeled as such, so users of our data understand the sourcing.
The Bottom Line for Site Selectors
Greater Omaha’s workforce is closer to 593,292 strong, not 552,241. That 41,000-job gap is not a data error. It is the documented result of a structural shift in how large employers report their Nebraska workforce locations, driven by the permanent expansion of remote and hybrid work since 2020.
The apparent declines in Finance & Insurance, Information, and Professional Services that show up in conventional county-reported data are substantially, and in some cases entirely, explained by that reporting shift, not by actual job losses. The region’s employer base grew. The County Not Reported establishment count nearly tripled. The industries involved are exactly those concentrated in urban metros, not dispersed across rural Nebraska.
The $121,000 average earnings of County Not Reported workers underscore that these are exactly the kind of high-value, knowledge-economy positions that matter most when companies evaluate workforce depth. Combined with Omaha’s existing concentration of financial services, insurance, technology, and professional services employment, the complete picture presents a regional labor market with more depth, more talent, and more resilience than the headline numbers alone would indicate.
We encourage site selectors and location consultants to contact us directly to discuss how County Not Reported data factors into your specific industry analysis. Our team is prepared to walk through the combined figures for any sector relevant to your client’s evaluation.