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BLS Labor Market MCP

Type: Apify MCP Actor (TypeScript)
Purpose: AI agent access to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment, unemployment, wage, CPI, and labor force data via the BLS Public Data API v2
Stack: Apify SDK, Node.js >=20, MCP protocol, standby mode, PPE billing

Overview

The BLS Labor Market MCP provides AI agents with structured access to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' vast economic datasets. It wraps the free BLS Public Data API v2 (registration required for higher rate limits) and exposes five operational tools via the MCP protocol.

API Key: Set BLS_API_KEY in your Apify Actor environment variables for best performance. Without a key, the free tier is limited. Get your key free at data.bls.gov/registrationEngine.

Tools

Quick Start

# Local development
cd ~/Projects/apify-actors/bls-labor-market-mcp
apify run
# Deploy to Apify
apify push

Input Schema

Tools are called via MCP JSON-RPC over HTTP POST to /mcp. Example:

{
"method":"tools/call",
"params":{
"name":"getUnemploymentRate",
"arguments":{
"state":"CA",
"startYear":2022,
"endYear":2024
}
}
}

All tools accept optional startYear and endYear (default: 2020 → current year).

getEmploymentData

{
"seriesId":"LNS12000000",
"startYear":2022,
"endYear":2024,
"state":"CA"
}

seriesId defaults to overall civilian employment level. Common series:

• LNS12000000 — Employment level
• LNS13000000 — Unemployed level
• LNS12300000 — Employment-population ratio

getUnemploymentRate

{
"state":"NY",
"startYear":2022,
"endYear":2024,
"measure":"U3"
}

measure options: U3 (official, default), U5, U6 (broadest). Omit state for national.

getWageData

{
"seriesId":"CES0500000013",
"startYear":2022,
"endYear":2024,
"state":"TX",
"measure":"hourly"
}

seriesId defaults to national average hourly earnings. Common series:

• CES0500000013 — Total private AHE
• CES3000000013 — Manufacturing AHE
• CES6500000013 — Education & Health AHE

getCPI

{
"seriesId":"CUUR0000SA0",
"startYear":2022,
"endYear":2024,
"seasonallyAdjusted":true
}

seriesId defaults to CPI-U all items. Common series:

• CUUR0000SA0 — CPI-U all items (1982-84=100)
• CUUR0000SAF1 — CPI-U food
• CUUR0000SAE1 — CPI-U energy
• CUUR0000SAH1 — CPI-U shelter

getLaborForce

{
"state":null,
"demographic":"gender",
"startYear":2022,
"endYear":2024,
"measure":"participation"
}

measure: participation (LFPR, default), employment (EMP-POP ratio), labor_force (LF level).
demographic: age, gender, race, education, or null for total.

Architecture

• Standby MCP: Server listens on /mcp (JSON-RPC over HTTP POST). Health probe at /.
• BLS API v2: REST POST to https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/
• Rate limiting: 1.1s gap between requests (BLS recommends ≤1 req/sec)
• ERROR_RETRY: Retries on HTTP 429, 500, 502, 503, 504 with exponential backoff (base 2s, max 3 retries)
• PPE charging: Actor.charge() called after each successful tool call
• State FIPS mapping: Accepts abbreviations (CA) or numeric FIPS (06)

Environment Variables

BLS Series Reference

Employment Situation (Current Population Survey — CPS)

Average Hourly Earnings (CES)

CPI-U

Employment Cost Index

License

MIT