Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
#2An 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
And the API itself seems quite simple and easy to use - so it looks like good access to important data.
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
#3Looks 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.
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
#4An 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 And the API itself seems quite s…
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/
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
#5This 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.
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
#6An 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 And the API itself seems quite s…
Hmm, seemed pretty straight forward to me, clicked on databases which took me to http://www.bls.gov/data/
Clicking on 'Top Picks' (its a badge but its also a link) got me to here: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?cu with some series indicators in it.
Clicked on Food and Beverage, selected some years, added a graph and got back the CPI for food and beverages between 1990 to present.
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
#7An 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 And the API itself seems quite s…
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/
or from here if you already know all the series codes: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/time.series/
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
#8An 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 And the API itself seems quite s…
There should probably better documentation for all of the data, since it isn't uncommon to see headlines that use the wrong time series for a particular concept.
That said their phone support is pretty excellent, and you'll likely get a direct line to the researcher preparing the data.
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
#9Has anyone found a way to find series ids? I keep getting "message":["Invalid Series for Series xyz1234"]
Re: Bureau of Labor Statistics Public Data API
#10This is huge. I can't wait to use this. Now we just need the same thing from the CDC, FDA, DOJ, DOE, etc.