A receiver circuit, including a multi-stage QAM de-mapper, for receiving a QAM data signal is disclosed. A first de-mapper circuit recovers a set of encoded data bits from the QAM data signal by calculating a plurality of distances between a received QAM symbol and each of a plurality of possible constellation points. A second de-mapper circuit then generates a set of unencoded data bits for the received QAM symbol based, at least in part, on the plurality of distances calculated by the first de-mapper circuit. The receiver circuit may further include a decoder circuit to decode the set of encoded data bits recovered by the first de-mapper circuit. The second de-mapper circuit may identify a subset of the plurality of possible constellation points based on a result of the decoding and select a constellation point that is associated with the shortest distance of the plurality of distances.