# Bls [Health: Active]

**Category:** 🧮 Data Science Tools  
**Repository:** https://github.com/pipeworx-io/mcp-bls  
**GitHub Stars:** 0  
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**Directory Page:** https://allmcps.com/mcp/bls

## Description
BLS MCP — Bureau of Labor Statistics public data API (v2)

## Tools
Capabilities this server exposes over MCP:

- **bls_get_series** — Fetch historical time series data for employment, inflation, wages, productivity, or housing. Returns dated data points with values. Provide series ID (e.g., "PAYEMS" for total nonfarm employment).
- **bls_search** — Search BLS economic data series by keyword. Returns matching series IDs and titles. Use bls_get_series with an ID to fetch historical data points.
- **bls_latest** — Get the most recent data point for a BLS series. Returns latest value and date. Use when you need current figures without historical context.
- **bls_popular_series** — Browse popular BLS series by category: employment, inflation, wages, housing, productivity. Returns series IDs and descriptions. Start here to explore available data.
- **bls_local_unemployment** — Look up the current LOCAL-AREA unemployment rate (or employment/labor force) for a US county, metro area (MSA), or city/town by NAME — e.g. "Wake County, NC", "Cary, North Carolina", "Fargo-Moorhead MSA". Resolves the place to its BLS LAUS series id (bls_get_series cannot do this; it needs a series ID, not a place name) and returns recent monthly data. Falls back to the county when a city is below the LAUS city-reporting threshold, and says so. Data is NOT seasonally adjusted.

## Claude Desktop Quick Installation
Install path detected from listing signals. Uses `npx` (confidence: high):

```json
"mcpServers": {
  "bls": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["-y","@pipeworx/mcp-bls"]
  }
}
```

## Documentation

## What Bls does

Bls provides MCP access to public data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its coverage includes employment, unemployment, wages, prices such as CPI and PPI, productivity, housing-related series, and occupational projections. Data is available across national, state, and metro-level contexts, with local-area unemployment lookups for counties, metropolitan areas, and cities or towns.

The main workflow is to find an appropriate BLS series, retrieve its observations, and interpret the returned dates and values. Agents can search by keyword, browse a curated set of commonly used series, or request a known series ID directly. A separate place-name lookup handles local unemployment without requiring callers to construct LAUS identifiers.

## How it works

Bls can run as a local stdio process through the `@pipeworx/mcp-bls` package, or it can be reached through Pipeworx's hosted MCP endpoints. The standalone process communicates over standard input and output and exposes only the BLS pack's tools. The hosted pack endpoint also lists shared Pipeworx tools, including routing and discovery functions; the full gateway endpoint provides access to those shared capabilities and other data packs.

Historical series responses are ordered newest first and include a count plus the observations returned for the requested range. The latest-value operation is intended for current figures when historical context is unnecessary. BLS release schedules vary: employment data is generally released monthly, CPI and PPI arrive around the middle of the month, metro unemployment follows the reference month by roughly three weeks, and productivity is quarterly.

## Setup and configuration

For a hosted connection, configure an MCP client with `https://gateway.pipeworx.io/bls/mcp`. A full-gateway connection uses `https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp`. For local execution, configure the client to run `npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-bls`, or start that command directly.

BLS API authentication uses a free API key. Supply it as `_apiKey` on individual calls. Requests without a key are subject to a lower limit of approximately 25 requests per day per IP, while a key raises the limit to approximately 500 per day. Hosted responses are cached with time-to-live values aligned to BLS release schedules.

## Tools and capabilities

- `bls_search` finds series IDs and titles using keywords.
- `bls_get_series` retrieves dated observations for a series, including employment, inflation, wages, productivity, and housing data.
- `bls_latest` returns the most recent value and date for a series.
- `bls_popular_series` lists commonly used series by employment, inflation, wages, housing, and productivity category.
- `bls_local_unemployment` resolves a county, MSA, or city name to a LAUS series and returns recent, non-seasonally-adjusted monthly data. Ambiguous names can produce candidates, and cities below the reporting threshold may fall back to their county.
- `bls_occupation_projections` supports occupation searches, SOC-code lookups, and ranking by measures such as projected growth. Results include the latest national projection period, employment, ten-year change, annual openings, median wage, and typical entry education.

## Limitations and notes

Series IDs distinguish between seasonally adjusted and not-seasonally-adjusted data, and related series may differ in frequency, geography, and coverage. `LNS` and `LNU` prefixes are useful indicators for adjusted and unadjusted national labor series, respectively, but callers should inspect metadata before comparing or plotting results. Not every series exists for every state or metro area, and smaller metros may have longer delays or more imputed values.

The series search catalog is not a substitute for the local-area lookup: use `bls_local_unemployment` for place names rather than trying to infer LAUS area codes. Year-over-year inflation calculations may require requesting 13 months of data and computing the change. Occupation projections cover the latest release and do not provide earlier vintages.

_Full upstream README: https://allmcps.com/mcp/bls/readme_