BLS Labor Statistics Scraper

Extract economic data directly from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) public API. Get Consumer Price Index (CPI), unemployment rates, employment figures, average wages, Producer Price Index (PPI), and hundreds of other economic indicators.

Features

• No Authentication Required — Access BLS public API with 25 free queries per day
• Multiple Preset Indicators — Pre-configured for common metrics (CPI, Unemployment, Employment, Wages, PPI)
• Custom Series IDs — Use any BLS series ID for specialized economic data
• Flexible Date Ranges — Fetch data spanning decades with customizable start and end years
• Clean JSON Output — Ready for analysis, charts, and dashboards
• Footnote Support — Includes BLS data quality notes and footnotes

Data Available

Built-in Presets

Preset	Series ID	Description
CPI-U	CUUR0000SA0	Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (All items, not seasonally adjusted)
Unemployment Rate	LNS14000000	Civilian unemployment rate
Total Employment	CES0000000001	Total nonfarm payroll employment
Average Wages	CES0500000003	Average hourly earnings, private sector
Producer Price Index	WPSFD4	Producer price index for finished goods

Custom Series

The BLS maintains thousands of series IDs covering:

• State and local employment data
• Industry-specific metrics
• Occupational wages
• Labor force participation
• Union membership
• Job openings and turnover
• And more...

Browse available series at: https://www.bls.gov/developers/api_faqs.htm

Input Configuration

Required Fields

• Data Preset — Choose from CPI-U, Unemployment, Employment, Wages, PPI, or Custom
• Start Year — Year to begin data collection (default: 5 years ago)
• End Year — Year to end data collection (default: current year)

Optional Fields

• Custom Series IDs — Only used when preset = "custom". Provide an array of BLS series IDs.

Example Inputs

CPI Data (2020-2024)

{
  "preset": "cpi",
  "startYear": 2020,
  "endYear": 2024
}

Unemployment Rate (Custom Range)

{
  "preset": "unemployment",
  "startYear": 2010,
  "endYear": 2024
}

Multiple Custom Series

{
  "preset": "custom",
  "seriesIds": ["CUUR0000SA0", "LNS14000000", "CES0000000001"],
  "startYear": 2022,
  "endYear": 2024
}

Output Format

Each record contains:

Field	Type	Description
seriesId	string	BLS series ID (e.g., "CUUR0000SA0")
year	integer	Calendar year
period	string	Period code (M01-M12 for monthly, Q01-Q04 for quarterly, A01 for annual)
periodName	string	Human-readable period name (e.g., "January", "Q1")
value	number	The data value (index point, rate, employment count, etc.)
footnotes	string	BLS footnotes or data quality notes (null if none)

Example Output

{
  "seriesId": "CUUR0000SA0",
  "year": 2024,
  "period": "M01",
  "periodName": "January",
  "value": 314.761,
  "footnotes": null
}

API Limitations

• 25 queries per day (free tier) — each query can include up to 3 series
• 20 years of data per request maximum
• No API key required — open public data
• Rate limiting: respectful spacing between requests

Use Cases

• Economic Analysis — Track inflation, employment trends, and wage growth
• Investment Research — Monitor economic indicators for market analysis
• Academic Research — Access historical economic time series
• Business Intelligence — Feed BLS data into dashboards and forecasting models
• Data Science — Build ML models predicting economic trends

Tutorial: Scraping CPI Data

Step 1: Open Actor Configuration

When you run this Actor, you'll see an input form with:

1. Data Preset dropdown (default: "CPI-U")
2. Start Year field
3. End Year field

Step 2: Enter Parameters

To get Consumer Price Index data for the last 5 years:

• Data Preset: Select "Consumer Price Index (CPI-U)"
• Start Year: 2019
• End Year: 2024
• Click "Start"

Step 3: Monitor Execution

The Actor will:

• Connect to the BLS API
• Request 12 monthly CPI values for each year
• Parse and transform the response
• Push records to the dataset

For 6 years of monthly data (2019-2024), you'll receive ~72 records.

Step 4: Download Results

Once complete, download the dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel. Each row represents a monthly CPI value with the index point, year, and period name.

Pricing

• Actor execution cost: Standard Apify compute charges apply
• Data cost: $0.002 per result
• No API key fees: BLS API is completely free

For 100 months of CPI data (≈8-9 years), typical cost is ~$0.20 (data) + compute.

Example Series IDs

Explore the BLS API for additional series. Common ones:

• CES0000000001 — Total nonfarm employment
• CUUR0000SA0 — CPI for all urban consumers
• LNS14000000 — Unemployment rate
• CES0500000003 — Average hourly earnings
• WPSFD4 — Producer prices, finished goods
• LNU02000000 — Labor force (civilian)
• LEU0252881600 — Union membership (annual)

Full list: https://data.bls.gov/

Troubleshooting

"No data returned"

• Verify the series ID is valid at https://www.bls.gov/data/
• Check that your year range is within available data for that series
• Some series may only have monthly data, others annual — BLS handles this automatically

"API rate limit exceeded"

• You've exceeded 25 requests today
• Wait 24 hours or check your BLS API quota
• Consider grouping multiple series into one request (up to 3 per query)

"Invalid series ID"

• Double-check spelling and capitalization
• Visit https://www.bls.gov/developers/api_faqs.htm to verify series ID format

Legal Notice

This Actor extracts data from the freely available BLS Public Data API (https://www.bls.gov/developers/). All data is public domain and no authentication bypass is used. By using this Actor, you agree to:

• Respect the 25 queries/day free limit
• Use data in accordance with BLS terms of service
• Include proper attribution to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Data Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor

Support

For questions about:

• This Actor: Report issues or contact via Apify
• BLS Data: Visit https://www.bls.gov/help/
• BLS API: See https://www.bls.gov/developers/

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• FRA Railroad Accidents Scraper — Extract transportation safety data
• Federal Statistical Data Aggregator — Combine multiple government data sources

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Version: 0.1 Last Updated: 2026-04-07 Author: Apify Marketplace