📊 BLS Data Scraper | US Bureau of Labor Statistics API

🚀 Export US economic time series in seconds. Pull CPI, unemployment, employment, PPI and any of the thousands of BLS series for any date range. No API key, no registration, no CSV wrangling.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-21 · 📊 9 fields per record · 📈 500,000+ time series available · 🇺🇸 US government official data · 📅 Monthly, quarterly, and annual data

The BLS Data Scraper retrieves time series data from the official US Bureau of Labor Statistics API v2 and returns 9 fields per record, including the series identifier, human-readable title, year, period, value, footnotes, and collection timestamp. The BLS is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, price changes, and productivity in the US economy.

The database covers every major US economic indicator - from consumer price inflation (CPI) and the unemployment rate to nonfarm payroll employment, hourly earnings, and the Producer Price Index. This Actor makes that data downloadable as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML in seconds. All requests go directly to the official BLS API, so you get authoritative government data with no intermediaries.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Economists, financial analysts, data journalists, policy researchers, fintech developers, business intelligence teams, academic researchers	Inflation tracking, labor market analysis, economic dashboards, research datasets, financial modeling, policy briefs

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📋 What the BLS Data Scraper does

Five data collection workflows in a single run:

• 📈 CPI tracking. Pull consumer price inflation month-by-month across any date range with CUUR0000SA0.
• 💼 Unemployment data. Fetch the official US unemployment rate series with LNS14000000.
• 🏭 Employment figures. Get total nonfarm payroll employment with CES0000000001.
• 💹 Producer prices. Retrieve the Producer Price Index for Final Demand with WPUFD4.
• 🔢 Any BLS series. Supply any valid BLS series ID and retrieve its full historical record.

Each record includes the series ID, human-readable series title (for the most popular series), year, period code (M01-M13 for months, Q01-Q05 for quarters, A01 for annual), period name, numeric value, footnotes (such as preliminary or revised data flags), and the timestamp when the record was collected.

💡 Why it matters: US economic indicators from the BLS are the primary inputs to inflation models, Federal Reserve policy decisions, and labor market research. Building your own pipeline means writing API wrappers, handling pagination, and refreshing by hand. This Actor skips all of that and delivers clean structured records on every run.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded economic dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
seriesIds	array of strings	["CUUR0000SA0", "LNS14000000"]	BLS series IDs to fetch. Up to 25 per request.
startYear	integer	2020	First year of data to retrieve.
endYear	integer	2024	Last year of data to retrieve. Max range: 10 years.
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.

Example: CPI and unemployment rate for 2020-2024.

{
    "seriesIds": ["CUUR0000SA0", "LNS14000000"],
    "startYear": 2020,
    "endYear": 2024,
    "maxItems": 120
}

Example: Employment and wage data for 2022-2024.

{
    "seriesIds": ["CES0000000001", "CES0500000008", "CES0500000003"],
    "startYear": 2022,
    "endYear": 2024,
    "maxItems": 500
}

⚠️ Good to Know: The BLS public API v2 allows up to 25 series per request and up to 10 years per query without registration. The API can occasionally be slow to respond (government infrastructure) - the Actor automatically retries failed requests up to 10 times with backoff, so slow responses are handled gracefully.

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📊 Output

Each record contains 9 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
📊 seriesId	string	"CUUR0000SA0"
📋 seriesTitle	string | null	"CPI All Urban Consumers, All Items"
📅 year	string	"2024"
🗓️ period	string	"M12"
📆 periodName	string	"December"
💹 value	string	"315.605"
📝 footnotes	array of strings	[]
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-21T23:27:20.537Z"
❌ error	string | null	null

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🇺🇸	Official government data. Direct from the BLS API v2 - the same source cited in every economic report.
📊	500,000+ series available. CPI, unemployment, employment, wages, PPI, productivity, and hundreds of niche sub-categories.
📅	Flexible date ranges. Retrieve monthly data from 1913 to present for most series.
⚡	Fast. 10 records in under 5 seconds, 120 records (full 5-year monthly series) in under 2 minutes.
🔁	Automatic retries. The Actor handles slow or dropped BLS connections with 10-attempt exponential backoff.
🚫	No authentication. Works with the public BLS API. No API key or registration needed.
🔢	Batch requests. Fetch up to 25 series in a single API call for efficient multi-indicator runs.

📊 BLS economic indicators are the foundation of every inflation model, wage study, and labor market report published in the United States.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Batch	Setup
⭐ BLS Data Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	500,000+ series	Live per run	Up to 25 series at once	⚡ 2 min
BLS public data files (direct download)	Free	Full	Periodic releases	No	🕒 Manual parsing
FRED API (Federal Reserve)	Free with key	Broad, includes BLS	Live	Yes	⏳ Registration
Commercial data vendors	$100+/month	Broad	Daily	Yes	🐢 Contracts
Manual BLS website browsing	Free	Full	Per visit	No	🕒 Hours

Pick this Actor when you need clean structured records, no manual work, and no pipeline maintenance.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the BLS Data Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Enter the BLS series IDs you want, choose a start/end year, and set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

📈 Financial Analysis and Fintech Real-time CPI feeds for inflation-linked products Unemployment rate inputs for credit risk models Historical wage data for compensation benchmarking PPI feeds for supply chain cost modeling	📰 Data Journalism and Policy Inflation charts from authoritative BLS source data Labor market trend analysis for policy briefs Monthly economic dashboard refreshes Recession indicator monitoring (employment + unemployment)
🎓 Academic Research Clean monthly datasets for econometric models Reproducible studies citing official BLS data Comparative economic analysis across decades Training sets for economic forecasting ML models	🏢 Business Intelligence Inflation-adjusted pricing model inputs Wage benchmarking against national averages Economic condition indicators for strategic planning Regional labor market comparisons for site selection

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🔌 Automating BLS Data Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Monthly runs aligned with BLS release dates keep your downstream databases in sync automatically with the latest CPI, employment, and wage figures.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Econometric analysis using official US government data Longitudinal studies on inflation, wages, and employment Reproducible research with citable BLS source data Teaching economic concepts with real historical datasets	🎨 Personal and creative Personal finance dashboards tracking real inflation Side projects visualizing historical economic cycles Portfolio demos combining economic and market data Hobby economic blogs backed by authoritative sources
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency reports on local vs national inflation Policy advocacy backed by official labor statistics Investigative journalism on wage stagnation trends Community economic impact studies and grant proposals	🧪 Experimentation Train economic forecasting and anomaly-detection models Validate fintech product hypotheses with real cycle data Prototype economic alert pipelines on real BLS releases Test data visualization libraries with authoritative time series

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Enter the BLS series IDs you want, set a date range (start year / end year), and click Start. The Actor sends a POST request to the official BLS API v2, receives the time series data, and emits one record per data point (one month, quarter, or year). No browser automation, no captchas, no manual steps.

📏 Where does the data come from?

Directly from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics official API at api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2. The BLS is the principal federal statistical agency measuring labor market activity, price changes, and productivity in the US economy.

🔢 How do I find BLS series IDs?

Visit the BLS Data Finder and browse to the dataset you need. Each series has an ID shown in the URL or data table. Popular IDs: CUUR0000SA0 (CPI), LNS14000000 (Unemployment Rate), CES0000000001 (Nonfarm Employment), WPUFD4 (PPI).

📅 How far back does the data go?

Most BLS series go back decades. The CPI series starts in 1913, unemployment goes to 1948. The public API allows up to 10 years per request - for longer ranges, run multiple requests with different date windows.

🔁 How often is the data updated?

The BLS releases most major series monthly. Running this Actor immediately after a BLS release (usually the second week of each month for CPI) gives you the freshest data. Every run fetches live data from the official API.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run this Actor on any cron interval. Set a monthly schedule aligned with BLS release dates to automatically push fresh economic indicators to your database or dashboard.

🐢 Why does it sometimes take longer to respond?

The BLS API is government infrastructure and can be slow to respond (response times of 60-90 seconds are observed). The Actor automatically retries failed connections up to 10 times with exponential backoff, so a run that looks slow is working correctly.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and gives you access to scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What if a run fails?

Apify automatically retries transient errors. If a run fails, inspect the log in the Runs tab, confirm the series IDs are valid, and re-run. Partial datasets from failed runs are preserved so you never lose progress.

🔑 Do I need a BLS API key?

No. The public BLS API v2 works without registration for up to 25 series per request and 500 queries per day per IP. For higher limits, you can register at bls.gov for a free API key and pass it as an input in a future version.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

BLS Data Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step economic workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe BLS data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh CPI or employment data into your product backend, or alert your team in Slack when a new BLS release is available.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more US government data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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This Actor uses the official, publicly accessible BLS API v2 (api.bls.gov). Data is owned by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and is in the public domain. The Actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics or the US Department of Labor.