Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System.

The bureau offers various statistics and indices for a range of topics, including inflation and prices, pay and benefits, and employment. In addition, the BLS offers many data retrieval tools (e.g. BLS Popular Series, Series Report), visualization tools (e.g. Charts for Economic News Releases), and applications (e.g. CPI Inflation Calculator, Injury and Illness Calculator) for its data. Furthermore, the BLS offers many publications and economic releases highlighting recent major economic news.

One of the most widely used resources from the BLS is the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. The BLS publishes an economic news release every month for the CPI, which details the previous month's data. The latest publication can be found at the link above, and archived news releases can be found here.

An example of data released by the BLS is shown below.

For any questions or concerns, please contact us at fscadmin@stevens.edu.