BLS Public Data API
US Bureau of Labor Statistics public data API providing access to employment statistics, Consumer Price Index, wages, inflation, and other labor market data.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
HTTPS enforced. API key is optional and provides no security — it only unlocks higher rate limits. No scope granularity. Public data so security concerns are minimal. Government infrastructure with no published security certifications.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
Retrieving authoritative US government economic statistics for research, dashboards, or economic modeling.
Avoid When
You need real-time data, non-US data, or require SLA guarantees — this is a free government service with no uptime commitments.
Use Cases
- • CPI and inflation tracking for financial models
- • Employment and unemployment rate analysis
- • Wage and compensation trend reporting
- • Economic research and data journalism
- • Automated economic indicator dashboards
Not For
- • Real-time data (data is released on scheduled publication dates, not real-time)
- • Non-US labor market data
- • High-frequency or sub-daily data needs
Interface
Authentication
Registration optional. Unregistered users get 25 queries/day and 10 series per query. Registered (free API key) gets 500 queries/day and 50 series per query. No credit card required.
Pricing
Completely free public government API. No charges ever. Rate limits are the only constraint.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Rate limits specified per-day not per-minute — easy to exhaust with bulk requests
- ⚠ Some errors return HTTP 200 with an error payload instead of proper 4xx status
- ⚠ Series IDs are cryptic and require knowledge of BLS nomenclature to construct
- ⚠ Data release schedule must be tracked externally — no push notifications
- ⚠ API v1 still exists but v2 required for registered users; agents must handle both
- ⚠ JSON responses use string types for numeric values in some fields
- ⚠ No pagination — must specify explicit year ranges; max 20 years per request
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.