@pipeworx/econdata

Connect: https://gateway.pipeworx.io/econdata/mcp · Install: one-click buttons

Tools: 4

US labor and price statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics public API v2 — inflation (CPI-U), the unemployment rate, non-farm payroll employment by industry, and any BLS series by ID.

Tools

Data arrives newest first — every response says so in observation_order, so you don’t have to infer it from the dates. total and returned are always equal here: BLS returns every point in the requested year range, so nothing is truncated.

Every data point carries an ISO date derived from the BLS period code (M01–M12 monthly, Q01–Q04 quarterly, S01/S02 semiannual, A01/M13 annual), so results sort and freshness-check without decoding "M06".

Auth

Keyless works, at roughly 25 requests per day per IP. A free BLS registration key raises that to 500/day: get one at https://data.bls.gov/registrationEngine/. The gateway supplies a platform key (PLATFORM_BLS_KEY); pass _apiKey only to override it with your own.

Two BLS limits fail differently and the pack distinguishes them, because they used to read alike:

• Per-second burst — BLS returns HTTP 429 “Requests Per Second Limit Exceeded” when concurrent callers land in the same second. The pack retries three times (400 ms, 1200 ms, 2500 ms); only a 429 that survives all three surfaces, as upstream_throttled, saying explicitly that this is not the daily quota and not an exhausted key.
• Daily threshold — arrives as a REQUEST_NOT_PROCESSED body, not an HTTP error. Also surfaced as upstream_throttled, with the registration link.

Data sources

• BLS Public Data API v2 — https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/ (docs: https://www.bls.gov/developers/api_signature_v2.htm)
• Series used: CUUR0000SA0 / CUSR0000SA0 (CPI-U, NSA / SA), LNS14000000 (unemployment rate), CES* (Current Employment Statistics by industry)

Tools

• get_series — Fetch any economic time series by ID (e.g., “CPUR0000SA0” for CPI, “LNS14000000” for unemployment). Returns historical data points with dates and values.
• get_unemployment — Get the US civilian unemployment rate over time (Bureau of Labor Statistics) — the percentage of the labor force currently unemployed. Use this for “unemployment rate” / “jobless rate” queries. Return
• get_cpi — Current US inflation rate (CPI year-over-year) and Consumer Price Index history for All Urban Consumers, US city average, all items. Returns monthly index values with computed yoy_inflation_pct per mo
• get_employment_by_industry — Get US non-farm payroll employment by industry (manufacturing, construction, retail, financial, government, etc.). Returns employment figures in thousands by period.