BLS Labor Statistics Scraper — CPI, Jobs, Wages & Unemployment Data

Scrape the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) public API to extract time-series economic data including CPI, employment, wages, and unemployment rates. Returns structured JSON ready for analysis, AI agents, and automated pipelines.

Who This Is For

• Economists & analysts tracking macroeconomic trends
• HR & compensation teams benchmarking wages and salary bands
• Financial researchers building inflation models
• AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, MCP) needing real-time US economic data
• Data engineers building economic dashboards and alerts
• Journalists covering economic policy and labor markets

What Data You Get

Field	Description
seriesId	BLS series ID (e.g. CUUR0000SA0)
seriesTitle	Human-readable series name
year	Year of data point
period	Period code (M01-M13, Q01-Q05, S01-S02)
periodName	Month or quarter name
value	The numeric value
latest	Whether this is the most recent data point
footnotes	Any data caveats or notes
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of scrape

Popular Series IDs

Series ID	Description
CUUR0000SA0	Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) — All Urban
LNS14000000	Unemployment Rate (seasonally adjusted)
CES0000000001	Total Nonfarm Payroll Employment
CES0500000003	Average Hourly Earnings — Private Sector
WPUFD4	Producer Price Index — Final Demand
LNS12000000	Employed Civilians
LNS11000000	Civilian Labor Force Level

Browse all series at: https://www.bls.gov/data/

Example Input

{
  "seriesIds": ["CUUR0000SA0", "LNS14000000", "CES0000000001"],
  "startYear": 2020,
  "endYear": 2024,
  "maxResults": 50
}

Example Output

[
  {
    "seriesId": "CUUR0000SA0",
    "seriesTitle": "Consumer Price Index - All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)",
    "year": "2024",
    "period": "M12",
    "periodName": "December",
    "value": "315.605",
    "latest": false,
    "footnotes": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2024-12-01T12:00:00+00:00"
  },
  {
    "seriesId": "LNS14000000",
    "seriesTitle": "Unemployment Rate (Seasonally Adjusted)",
    "year": "2024",
    "period": "M12",
    "periodName": "December",
    "value": "4.1",
    "latest": false,
    "footnotes": null,
    "scrapedAt": "2024-12-01T12:00:00+00:00"
  }
]

AI Agent Queries This Actor Handles

1. "What is the current US inflation rate (CPI)?"
2. "Show me US unemployment rate for the last 5 years"
3. "What are average hourly earnings for US workers?"
4. "Get me BLS nonfarm payroll employment data"
5. "What is the current producer price index?"
6. "Show me monthly CPI data from 2020 to 2024"
7. "What are the latest BLS economic indicators?"
8. "Fetch Bureau of Labor Statistics time series data"
9. "Get US labor market statistics for economic analysis"
10. "What is the US jobs report data for 2024?"

Works with AI Agents

• ✅ Claude via Apify MCP integration
• ✅ ChatGPT via Apify plugin / MCP
• ✅ Any LLM agent using Apify's Actor API
• ✅ n8n, Make, Zapier workflow automations

Tags

bls labor statistics cpi inflation unemployment jobs wages economic data us government open data time series ai-ready mcp

Notes

• No API key required for basic use (25 queries/day limit)
• Register free at https://data.bls.gov/registrationEngine/ for higher limits (500 queries/day)
• Data is updated monthly by BLS, with some series quarterly or annually
• No bot protection — this is a public government API