
Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API - kmfrk
http://www.bls.gov/developers/
======
nmcfarl
An interesting micro-site – it seems very much more aimed at people who know
BLS data already, and much less aimed at coders. The FAQ answers the question
"What is an API?", but doesn't even have a list of the IDs required in order
to get any data whatsoever out of that API. It does however point to this page
which is helpful, if not comprehensive:
[http://www.bls.gov/help/hlpforma.htm](http://www.bls.gov/help/hlpforma.htm)

And the API itself seems quite simple and easy to use - so it looks like good
access to important data.

~~~
educating
I think HN took the API down about 10 min ago.

Before people start iterating every code variation to hit the API and fill
their DBs, I think you can download the data from here:
[http://www.bls.gov/data/](http://www.bls.gov/data/)

~~~
nmcfarl
or from here if you already know all the series codes:
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/time.series/

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natural219
A couple of years ago I did a research project using the current population
survey (CPS) from the BLS and I was surprised about how much interesting data
there is.

I'm not sure if they've improved since 2011, but at the time it was very hard
to parse and order the public data sets since the headers have changed so much
over time and the data is not harmonized. I can't tell if BLS has done much
data consolidation through this API, but if you're looking to consume this
data I recommend just downloading it and parsing it yourself.

The IPUMS project from the University of Minnesota[1] is an excellent resource
for anyone actually wanting to look at BLS / CPS data over time. They do a lot
of the gruntwork for gathering CPS results across the years and synthesizing
the various codes, field names, and standards into a coherent data set.

For anyone interested in actually using CPS data, a colleague and I wrote a
(rather shitty) Java program to parse IPUMS data into a local longitudinal
dataset. The code was written by sophomores in college, so I can't promise
that this code is any good, but it's probably a good place to get started if
you're interested[2].

[1] [http://www.ipums.org/](http://www.ipums.org/) [2]
[https://github.com/c-johnson/CPSMatcher](https://github.com/c-johnson/CPSMatcher)

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msutherl
This is great. BLS was a huge help to me in my last year of university when I
was freaking out trying to figure out what to do with my life. Just seeing
what professions most people have, and which ones are growing vs. shrinking,
was very illuminating. Methinks more people need to see this data.

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Alex3917
This is huge. I can't wait to use this. Now we just need the same thing from
the CDC, FDA, DOJ, DOE, etc.

~~~
seanherron
Hey Alex,

I'm a Presidential Innovation Fellow focusing on open data initiatives at the
FDA. I'm working to get a number of our datasets made public and available via
APIs. I'd love to talk to you about what would be useful to you (and others)
and how we can help. Feel free to email me at sean.herron@fda.hhs.gov if you
want to chat.

~~~
Alex3917
Sean thanks for the offer, I'll definitely shoot you a note in the next couple
days.

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pwang
That's incredible... a statistical data JSON API that provides Java and Ruby
code snippets, but not Python, R, or even Javascript. My right-wing friends
would cite this as further evidence that the Obama administration is out of
touch.

Maybe it's a backhanded complement and they think that Python and R folks can
figure this out on their own...? :-)

~~~
hrbrmstr
Indeed. Pretty quick work with RCurl & RJSONIO…
[https://gist.github.com/hrbrmstr/6566865](https://gist.github.com/hrbrmstr/6566865)

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grumblefoo
Has anyone found a way to find series ids? I keep getting "message":["Invalid
Series for Series xyz1234"]

~~~
Nicholas_C
[http://www.bls.gov/help/hlpforma.htm](http://www.bls.gov/help/hlpforma.htm)

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pdfcollect
When is this department going to collect the data ( or perhaps it already
does? ) - Which major in college actually gets jobs for students (say within 5
years of graduation - according to their training) ? Last time I called them,
they told me, you should do your own statistics if you want to answer that.
Does anyone know?

~~~
skram
A lot of schools provide that sort of data but of course it is biased. You
could also use proxies for this such as LinkedIn and other self-reported data
like [https://angel.co/colleges](https://angel.co/colleges)

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nmcfarl
Looks like there is no CORS support: an OPTIONS calls result in a 403
Forbidden, and 'Origin' headers don’t get us 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin'
response headers.

Which is a shame because a Web-only client would have been fun - and easy as
the API is wide open and doesn’t require registration.

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malexbone
How timely is the data? As in: When new data/reports are available, when will
they be accessible via the API?

I was unable to determine if using the API could provide a first mover
advantage for trading applications that take BLS data into consideration.

~~~
csa
Here is a link to releases:

[http://www.bls.gov/bls/newsrels.htm](http://www.bls.gov/bls/newsrels.htm)

I vaguely remember an article that said that some folks get the BLS data a few
milliseconds faster than everyone else and avail themselves of this first
mover advantage -- don't quote me on that, though. Regardless, I somehow doubt
this API will be useful for first mover advantage unless perhaps you are
already doing this type of technical trading in the finance industry.

~~~
uptown
You're probably referring to this Rolling Stone article:

[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/16-major...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/16-major-
firms-may-have-received-early-data-from-thomson-reuters-20130905)

------
skram
This is awesome.. but are we sure this is brand new? I feel like I've seen
this before (then again, I do dream about government APIs and data). I do know
the page says "Last Modified Date: August 19, 2013"

Does anyone know more?

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ataggart
+1 for not calling it a "REST API".

