What's covered in this guide?
What is the Multiple Worksite Report?
The Multiple Worksite Report (MWR) is a federal survey administered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It collects employment and wage data broken down by physical work location, which BLS uses to analyze employment and economic conditions at the county and regional level.
Multi-location employers typically report their employment and wages in aggregate on a state Unemployment Insurance (UI) account. The MWR distributes that aggregate data across each individual worksite, giving BLS a more granular picture of where employment is located within the state.
Who needs to file
You are required to complete the MWR if all of the following apply in a given state:
You report employees under a single Unemployment Insurance (UI) account number
You operate more than one worksite, or are engaged in multiple economic activities
Your secondary worksites combined have 10 or more employees — secondary worksites are all locations except the one with the greatest number of employees
The MWR requirement is assessed independently for each state and each UI account. If your business operates in multiple states, each state is evaluated on its own — locations in a state where you don't meet the threshold are not required to file there.
If you're unsure whether you need to file, contact the State Employment Security Agency where you file your Quarterly Contribution Report for state unemployment insurance.
How Workforce generates your MWR data
Workforce automatically generates MWR data as part of each quarterly tax filing. A copy of the worksite report is included in your quarterly tax filing packet, available from Payroll → Payroll Settings → Tax Filings before the end of the first month following the quarter.
You don't need to set anything up or trigger the export manually — the data is generated from your existing payroll records.
Note: Workforce includes the MWR data in your tax filing packet for you to use when submitting to BLS. Workforce does not submit the report to BLS on your behalf.
How worksites and employees are determined
Each location set up in Workforce is treated as a separate worksite. For each worksite, Workforce reports the location's name, address, and applicable state unemployment (SUTA) tax code.
Each employee's wages are attributed to a single worksite based on their report location — the location associated with their report department in Workforce.
Report location is the same field that drives state tax withholding, SUTA, and other location-based payroll calculations. For more, see How Locations Affect Payroll.
Tip: Workforce uses each employee's report location at the time the quarterly report is generated — not the locations where they physically worked during the quarter. If an employee works across multiple sites, make sure their report location reflects where they are primarily based or supervised.
Submitting to BLS
Once your quarterly tax filing packet is available, use the MWR data in it to submit your report to BLS:
Navigate to Payroll → Payroll Settings → Tax Filings and download your quarterly packet.
Locate the MWR data in the packet.
Submit it to BLS through their secure reporting portal. Type the URL https://idcf.bls.gov/ directly into your browser's address bar — the portal cannot be found through search engines.
If you have questions about your BLS filing obligation or the submission process, contact the State Employment Security Agency in the state where you file your unemployment insurance.