Bureau of Labor Statistics website screenshot

Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Public Data API provides developers programmatic access to the full catalog of official federal labor and economic statistics published by the U.S. Department of Labor. The API delivers historical time-series data spanning employment, unemployment rates, Consumer Price Index (CPI), Producer Price Index (PPI), wages and earnings, and productivity metrics drawn from major BLS surveys. Two versions are available: an unauthenticated Version 1.0 suitable for lightweight exploration and an enhanced Version 2.0 that requires free registration and returns richer results including catalog metadata, statistical calculations, and annual averages. Responses are served in JSON format, and the API is freely available to the public with no cost for access.

Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network: Surveys API and Time Series API. Tagged areas include Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, Employment, Unemployment, and CPI.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Bureau of Labor Statistics’ developer surface includes authentication, documentation, engineering blog, pricing, and 13 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
51.2/100 developing ▬ flat Agent 48/100 agent ready Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
AccessFreeOpen⚡ Free to try
2 APIs
Bureau of Labor StatisticsBLSEmploymentUnemploymentCPIConsumer Price IndexPPIProducer Price IndexWagesLabor StatisticsEconomic IndicatorsFederal GovernmentOpen Data

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
Composite quality — 51.2/100 · developing
Contract Quality 19.0 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 4.3 / 20
Commercial Clarity 7.9 / 20
Operational Transparency 2.7 / 13
Governance 10.4 / 12
Discoverability 9.3 / 10
Agent readiness — 48/100 · agent ready
Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 15 / 15
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/bls: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 2

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Bureau of Labor Statistics Surveys API

Retrieve the list of available BLS surveys

Bureau of Labor Statistics Time Series API

Retrieve single or multiple time series data

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Bls Plans Pricing

2 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Bls Rate Limits

0 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Bls Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Bls Context

6 classes · 32 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Bureau of Labor Statistics API Rules

6 rules · 5 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 2

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

BLS Time Series Data Request

8 properties

JSON SCHEMA

BLS Time Series Data Response

4 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Examples 4

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Bls Multi Series V2 Request

7 fields

EXAMPLE

Bls Multi Series V2 Response

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Bls Unemployment Rate Request

3 fields

EXAMPLE

Bls Unemployment Rate Response

4 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Bls Authentication

apiKey · 2 schemes

SECURITY

Bls Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Bls Agentic Access

5 operations · 1 acting

5 operations · 1 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation
Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess
AgenticAccess

Design & Contract 2

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Vocabulary
Vocabulary
 JSONLDContext
JSONLDContext

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrg
GitHubOrg

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity
 Authentication
Authentication

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

StatusPage
StatusPage
 RateLimits
RateLimits

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing
Pricing
 Plans
Plans
 FinOps
FinOps

Company 4

The organization behind the API

Website
Website
 LinkedIn
LinkedIn
 Blog
Blog
 BlogFeed
BlogFeed

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

X
X

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bls/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
name: Bureau of Labor Statistics
description: 'The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Public Data API provides developers programmatic access to the full catalog
  of official federal labor and economic statistics published by the U.S. Department of Labor. The API delivers historical
  time-series data spanning employment, unemployment rates, Consumer Price Index (CPI), Producer Price Index (PPI), wages
  and earnings, and productivity metrics drawn from major BLS surveys. Two versions are available: an unauthenticated Version
  1.0 suitable for lightweight exploration and an enhanced Version 2.0 that requires free registration and returns richer
  results including catalog metadata, statistical calculations, and annual averages. Responses are served in JSON format,
  and the API is freely available to the public with no cost for access.'
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: open
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: true
  label: Free · Open access
  confidence: high
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/bls.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bls/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-06-12'
modified: '2026-06-12'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
tags:
- Bureau of Labor Statistics
- BLS
- Employment
- Unemployment
- CPI
- Consumer Price Index
- PPI
- Producer Price Index
- Wages
- Labor Statistics
- Economic Indicators
- Federal Government
- Open Data
apis:
- aid: bls:bls-surveys-api
  name: Bureau of Labor Statistics Surveys API
  description: Retrieve the list of available BLS surveys
  humanURL: https://www.bls.gov/developers/home.htm
  baseURL: https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2
  tags:
  - Surveys
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/bls-surveys-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.bls.gov/developers/home.htm
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bls/refs/heads/main/json-schema/bls-time-series-request.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bls/refs/heads/main/json-schema/bls-time-series-response.json
  - type: Registration
    url: https://data.bls.gov/registrationEngine/
  - type: FAQ
    url: https://www.bls.gov/developers/api_faqs.htm
- aid: bls:bls-time-series-api
  name: Bureau of Labor Statistics Time Series API
  description: Retrieve single or multiple time series data
  humanURL: https://www.bls.gov/developers/home.htm
  baseURL: https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2
  tags:
  - Time Series
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/bls-time-series-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.bls.gov/developers/home.htm
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bls/refs/heads/main/json-schema/bls-time-series-request.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bls/refs/heads/main/json-schema/bls-time-series-response.json
  - type: Registration
    url: https://data.bls.gov/registrationEngine/
  - type: FAQ
    url: https://www.bls.gov/developers/api_faqs.htm
common:
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/bls-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/bls-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/bls-authentication.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.bls.gov
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.bls.gov/developers/home.htm
- type: GitHubOrg
  url: https://github.com/topics/bureau-of-labor-statistics
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bureau-of-labor-statistics
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.bls.gov/bls/news.htm
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.bls.gov/developers/home.htm
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://www.bls.gov/developers/api_faqs.htm
- type: X
  url: https://x.com/BLS_gov
- type: Vocabulary
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bls/refs/heads/main/vocabulary/bls-vocabulary.yml
- type: JSONLDContext
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bls/refs/heads/main/json-ld/bls-context.jsonld
- type: BlogFeed
  url: blogs/blogs.json
- type: Plans
  url: plans/bls-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/bls-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/bls-finops.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com