📈 BLS Wage Data Scraper

🚀 Collect U.S. economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Get CPI, unemployment rates, employment levels, hourly earnings, and PPI data. Select from 8 pre-built series or enter custom IDs. No coding required.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-04-16 · 📊 8 pre-built series · 📅 Up to 20 years of data · 🔧 Custom series IDs · ⚡ Under 5 seconds per run

Pull structured records from BLS Wage Data — clean fields ready as CSV, JSON, JSONL, Excel, or XML for downstream pipelines.

Copy to your AI assistant

Copy this block into ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, or any LLM to start using this actor.

parseforge/bls-wage-data-scraper on Apify. Call: ApifyClient("TOKEN").actor("parseforge/bls-wage-data-scraper").call(run_input={...}), then client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items for results. Key inputs: maxItems (integer, default 10), seriesId (string, default "CUUR0000SA0"), customSeriesId (string), startYear (string, default "2022"), endYear (string, default "2024"), registrationKey (string). Full actor spec: fetch build via GET https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/parseforge~bls-wage-data-scraper (Bearer TOKEN). Get token: https://console.apify.com/account/integrations

The BLS Wage Data Scraper collects U.S. economic time series data including Consumer Price Index (CPI), unemployment rates, employment levels, average hourly earnings, and Producer Price Index. Select from 8 pre-built data series or enter any custom BLS series ID. Filter by year range and get monthly data points.

Whether you are an economist tracking inflation, a business analyst monitoring labor costs, or a researcher studying employment trends, this tool delivers official government statistics in structured format ready for analysis.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Economists, financial analysts, HR departments, journalists, researchers, business strategists	Inflation tracking, salary benchmarking, employment monitoring, economic forecasting, labor market analysis

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📋 What the BLS Wage Data Scraper does

• 📊 Pre-built data series. Choose from CPI, Core CPI, unemployment rate, nonfarm employment, hourly earnings, PPI, labor force, and employment level.
• 🔧 Custom series support. Enter any valid BLS series ID to fetch specialized data.
• 📅 Year range filtering. Specify start and end years for your data (up to 10 years without a key, 20 with one).
• 📋 Monthly data points. Get individual values for each month in your selected range.
• 📝 Footnotes included. Capture BLS footnotes and annotations for each data point.
• 🔑 Optional API key. Use your free BLS registration key for extended date ranges and higher rate limits.

Each record includes the series ID, series name, year, period, value, and footnotes.

💡 Why it matters: navigating the BLS website to download economic data involves complex menus, limited export options, and manual file management. This Actor delivers structured BLS data in seconds with a simple configuration.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Max data points. Free: 10, Paid: up to 1,000,000.
seriesId	string	"CUUR0000SA0"	Pre-built BLS series or "custom" for custom ID.
customSeriesId	string	""	Custom BLS series ID (only when seriesId is "custom").
startYear	string	"2022"	Start year (4-digit).
endYear	string	"2024"	End year (4-digit).
registrationKey	string	""	Optional free BLS API key for extended ranges.

Example: CPI data for 2022-2024.

{
    "seriesId": "CUUR0000SA0",
    "startYear": "2022",
    "endYear": "2024",
    "maxItems": 50
}

Example: unemployment rate for 2020-2024.

{
    "seriesId": "LNS14000000",
    "startYear": "2020",
    "endYear": "2024",
    "maxItems": 100
}

⚠️ Good to Know: Free users are limited to 10 data points per run. Without a BLS registration key, the maximum date range is 10 years. Register for a free key at data.bls.gov for up to 20 years.

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📊 Output

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🆔 seriesId	string	"CUUR0000SA0"
📋 seriesName	string	"Consumer Price Index - All Urban Consumers"
📅 year	string	"2024"
📅 period	string	"M12"
📅 periodName	string	"December"
📊 value	string	"315.605"
📝 footnotes	string	BLS footnotes
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-04-08T16:52:14.908Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
📊	8 pre-built series. CPI, unemployment, wages, PPI, employment, and labor force.
🔧	Custom series. Enter any BLS series ID for specialized data.
📅	Year range control. Up to 10 years (or 20 with free API key).
⚡	Fast. Under 5 seconds per request.
📋	Monthly granularity. Individual data points for each month.
📝	Footnotes. BLS annotations preserved for context.
📊	Structured output. JSON, CSV, and Excel export.

📊 8 pre-built series covering CPI, unemployment, wages, PPI, labor force, and employment levels.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Speed	Series support	Year range	Setup
⭐ BLS Wage Data Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit	Under 5 sec	8 pre-built + custom	Up to 20 years	⚡ 2 min
BLS website manual download	Free	Slow	All series	Varies by tool	🕒 10+ min
BLS API direct access	Free	Fast	All series	10-20 years	🕒 30+ min
Paid data vendors	High	Fast	Varies	Varies	🕒 Varies

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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 Wage Data Scraper page on Apify.
3. 🎯 Set input. Select a data series and set the year range.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and get results in seconds.
5. 📥 Download. Grab results in JSON, CSV, or Excel from the Dataset tab.

⏱️ Total time: 2 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

📈 Economic Analysis Track CPI and inflation trends Monitor unemployment rate changes Analyze wage growth patterns Build economic forecasting models

💼 Business & HR Benchmark hourly earnings by industry Support compensation planning with PPI data Generate economic reports for stakeholders Pull official statistics for journalism

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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 Empirical datasets for papers, thesis work, and coursework Longitudinal studies tracking changes across snapshots Reproducible research with cited, versioned data pulls Classroom exercises on data analysis and ethical scraping	🎨 Personal and creative Side projects, portfolio demos, and indie app launches Data visualizations, dashboards, and infographics Content research for bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters Hobbyist collections and personal trackers
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency reporting and accountability projects Advocacy campaigns backed by public-interest data Community-run databases for local issues Investigative journalism on public records	🧪 Experimentation Prototype AI and machine-learning pipelines with real data Validate product-market hypotheses before engineering spend Train small domain-specific models on niche corpora Test dashboard concepts with live input

🤖 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

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🔌 Automating BLS Wage Data Scraper

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

🔌 Integrate with any app

• Make - Automate economic data collection
• Zapier - Connect 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get CPI or unemployment updates
• Airbyte - Data pipelines
• GitHub - Trigger from commits
• Google Drive - Export to Sheets

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💡 Browse the complete ParseForge collection.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Independent tool, not affiliated with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or the U.S. Department of Labor. Data is accessed through the official BLS public API.