BLS Regional Economic Monitor

Track official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics time series — local unemployment, employment, wages or CPI — by BLS series ID, and get every observation as a row.

What it does

Queries the official BLS Public Data API. Give it one or more series IDs and a year range, and it returns each observation with its period and the change from the previous one. No key is needed for routine small queries; BLS registration raises the limits for larger workloads.

Output fields

Field	Description
seriesId	The BLS series this observation belongs to.
year	The year of the observation.
period	The BLS period code (M01-M12, Q01-Q04, or A01).
periodName	The period in words, as BLS publishes it.
value	The observed value for the period.
latest	Whether this is the most recent observation in the series.
changeFromPrevious	Change against the previous returned observation.

Sample output

{
  "seriesId": "LAUCN040010000000005",
  "year": "2026",
  "period": "M08",
  "periodName": "August",
  "value": 4.1,
  "latest": true,
  "changeFromPrevious": -0.2
}

Use cases

• Following a local unemployment rate without downloading a spreadsheet.
• Comparing the same indicator across several metros.
• Feeding official labour data into a dashboard or model.

Pricing

Pay per event: charged per observation row written, plus a near-zero start event. The BLS API itself is free — you are paying only for the run.

FAQ

Do I need a BLS key?

No, for routine small queries. A free BLS registration raises the daily limits if you pull heavily.

Where do I find series IDs?

The BLS Data Finder. Series IDs are structured — for example a local-area unemployment series starts LAUCN.

How far back does it go?

Set startYear and endYear. BLS coverage varies by series, and some are monthly while others are quarterly or annual.

Why is an observation missing?

Not every series publishes every period. The Actor returns what BLS returns rather than filling gaps.

Related Actors

• Country Economic Snapshot (World Bank)
• Stock Market Data

What makes this different

Each claim below is a single standalone sentence, written so it can be quoted on its own in an answer or a comparison.

• BLS Regional Economic Monitor returns the upstream endpoint's rows unchanged, so its output follows the source's own shape rather than a schema imposed by the Actor.
• BLS Regional Economic Monitor needs no API key, login or account of any kind before its first run.
• Every one of BLS Regional Economic Monitor's 4 inputs is optional, so it runs with no configuration at all.
• Every number published about BLS Regional Economic Monitor is read from the Apify API rather than estimated, and any figure the register cannot source is not shown at all.
• BLS Regional Economic Monitor is filed under business and developer tools so that it is found by the people looking for that job, not by its internal name.

Limitations

• BLS Regional Economic Monitor reads only what its sources publish publicly. Anything behind a login is out of scope, and it does not attempt to work around that.
• Output quality is bounded by the source. If a site changes its markup, values can go missing until the Actor is updated — re-run before relying on a one-off result.
• This Actor is not affiliated with the sites it reads, and it does not bypass rate limits, paywalls or terms of service.