📉 BLS Unemployment Scraper

🚀 Export BLS unemployment time series in seconds. National, state, metro, and county unemployment data, straight to CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-25 · 📊 8 fields per record · Local & national coverage · 1948-present

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks unemployment via the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program and the Current Population Survey. This actor wraps the official BLS public timeseries API to deliver clean observations for any series.

Coverage spans national rates, state and metro LAUS series, county-level data, and seasonally vs. unadjusted variants.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Economists	Regional labor analysis
Real estate teams	Metro demand modelling
Journalists	Local unemployment stories
Policy researchers	County labor trends

📋 What the BLS Unemployment Scraper does

• Calls BLS public API for any LAUS or CPS series IDs
• Returns monthly observations with year, period, value
• Supports historical pulls back to series inception
• Flags the latest observation per series

💡 Why it matters: Labor data, ready for analysis without the BLS UI.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
seriesIds	array	BLS series IDs (default LNS14000000)
maxItems	integer	Cap on observations
startYear	integer	Optional
endYear	integer	Optional

{ "seriesIds": ["LNS14000000"], "maxItems": 50 }

{ "seriesIds": ["LAUMT063108000000003"], "startYear": 2020, "endYear": 2025 }

⚠️ Good to Know: Without an API key, BLS limits queries. For heavy use, register a free key at bls.gov.

📊 Output

Field	Type	Description
📌 seriesId	string	BLS series ID
📅 year	number	Observation year
📆 period	string	M01-M13
periodName	string	Month name
📉 value	number	Unemployment rate or level
latest	boolean	Most recent obs
footnotes	array	BLS footnote text
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp

✨ Why choose this Actor

• Direct BLS API: official source
• Multi-series batching
• Latest flag for monitoring

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Speed	Maintenance
This actor	Pay per result	Fast	None
BLS site manual	Free	Slow	Manual
FRED	Free	Fast	Custom code

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free account w/ $5 credit
2. Open the actor
3. Set series IDs and optional year range
4. Run
5. Download dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML

💼 Business use cases

Regional planning

Metro and county unemployment for site selection.

Workforce analytics

Track talent supply pressure in your market.

Financial modelling

Macro inputs for credit and risk models.

Media

Local labor stories powered by BLS.

🔌 Automating BLS Unemployment Scraper

Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub Actions, Google Drive.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

Research

Academic labor economics.

Personal

Local job market awareness.

Non-profit

Workforce development reporting.

Experimentation

Train labor demand models.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Copilot can explain LAUS series IDs.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is LAUS? A: Local Area Unemployment Statistics program from BLS. Q: How granular? A: Down to county. Q: Seasonally adjusted? A: Depends on the series. Q: How far back? A: National from 1948, local typically from 1990. Q: Updates? A: Monthly. Q: API key needed? A: Not for small queries. Q: Can I get labor force level? A: Yes, via series IDs ending in 5 vs 3. Q: Are metro definitions current? A: Yes, OMB-current. Q: Can I batch many series? A: Yes, the input takes an array. Q: Where do I find series IDs? A: bls.gov data tools.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub Actions, Google Sheets, Webhooks.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only publicly available data collected.