BLS Public Data APIIs the API documentation sufficient—any gaps that would greatly help or would...
Transcript of BLS Public Data APIIs the API documentation sufficient—any gaps that would greatly help or would...
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1 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Overview
BLS Public Data API
Amrit KohliOffice of Technology and Survey Processing
Division of Enterprise Web Systems
9 November 2017
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2 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov2 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
BLS Public Data API What is it Usage history What can you do with it How to get started How to use it Lessons Learned Questions for the DUAC/Discussion
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3 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov3 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
BLS API at a Glance
What is it?Data retrieval targeted for application developers Replace Web scraping
How does it work? HTTPS-based API JSON and XLSX outputs
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4 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov4 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
2 years of BLS API usageLowest # of requests 97K (June 2015) -- Highest # of requests 23M (Nov 2013)Lowest # of unique IPs 748 (June 2014) -- Highest # unique IPs 13093 (Apr 2014)
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BLS Requests
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5 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov5 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Web scraping
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6 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov6 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
API equivalent
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7 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov7 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
BLS API Use Case 1 Washington Post Jobs
Report https://www.washingtonp
ost.com/graphics/business/jobs-report/
Source: The Washington Post
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8 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov8 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
BLS API Use Case 2 Flatiron School
https://flatironschool.com/ Students developed CareerSpark
an iOS application that uses employment and occupational data from the BLS for career exploration as part of the Opportunity project https://opportunity.census.gov/
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9 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov9 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
BLS API Use Case 3 UMd’s CS department built several
prototypes ingesting data using the BLS API https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.03569.pdfTime Series explorer to compare and contrast multiple
time series through a stacked overlay. Geographic Chloropleth map to investigate changes in
employment according to demographics or industryBLSVisualizer to interactively navigate through the
employment data, which is organized in a hierarchical format
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10 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov10 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Time Series Explorer
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11 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov11 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Geographic Chloropleth Map
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12 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov12 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
BLSVisualizer
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13 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov13 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
BLS API Use Case 4 Major Sector Productivity in BLS
Using Excel macro to pull about 100 series from APIs -industrial production index from the Fed, sales and inventories from Census, and BLS prices to get a preliminary growth rate of manufacturing industries.
Helps to validate the statistics produced by the office.Gives an early idea of stories to focus on to inform the
public.
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Excel Macro
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BLS API Use Case 5 BLS DataFinder (text based time series search tool)
Extracts time series details using API.
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BLS DataFinder
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17 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov17 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Resources
API Getting Started Pagehttps://www.bls.gov/developersDocumentation of API signatures (parameters)
– Sample Code: Java, Python, PHP, R, SAS, MATLAB, etc…– FAQs
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18 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov18 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Request a Single Series
Requesting data about a single time series: LAUCN040010000000005 (Employment: Apache County, AZ)
https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/LAUCN040010000000005
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19 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov19 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Single Series Results
{ "status":"REQUEST_SUCCEEDED", "responseTime":34, "message":[], "Results": {
"series": [{"seriesID":"LAUCN040010000000005", "data":[
{"year":"2017","period":"M07","periodName":“July","value":"17216","footnotes":[
{"code":“P","text":“Preliminary.“
}]},{"year":"2017","period":"M06","periodName":“June","value":"17728","footnotes":[{}]},
...
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20 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov20 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Request Excel Output
Requesting data about a single time series: LAUCN040010000000005 (Employment: Apache County, AZ)
https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/LAUCN040010000000005.xlsx
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21 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov21 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Excel Results
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22 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov22 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Request Catalog Metadata
Requesting data about a single time series for a given year, including metadata: LAUCN040010000000005 (Employment: Apache County, AZ)
https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/LAUCN040010000000005?registrationKey=000f4e000f204473bb565256e8eee73e&catalog=true&startYear=2010&endYear=2010
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Catalog Results{ "status":"REQUEST_SUCCEEDED", "responseTime":55, "message":[],
"Results": { "series": [{
"seriesID":"LAUCN040010000000005", "catalog":{
"series_title":"Employment: Apache County, AZ (U)","series_id":"LAUCN040010000000005","seasonality":"Not Seasonally Adjusted","survey_name":"Local Area Unemployment Statistics","measure_data_type":"employment","area":"Apache County, AZ","area_type":"Counties and equivalents“
}"data":[
{"year":"2010","period":"M12","periodName":"December","value":"19170","footnotes":[
{"code":"R","text":"Data were subject to revision on April 15, 2016.“
}]},….
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24 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov24 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Request Calculations
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25 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov25 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Net and Percent Changes"data": [
{"year": "2010","period": "M13","periodName": "Annual","value": "23438","footnotes": [{
"code": "R","text": "Data were subject to revision on April 15, 2016."}],
"calculations": {"net_changes": {
"1": "747","3": "413","6": "-632","12": "500“ },
"pct_changes": {“1": "3.3","3": "1.8","6": "-2.6","12": "2.2"}
}}
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26 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov26 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
API: Lessons Learned
Performance, Scaling and Caching Limiting and Throttling (victim of its own success)
Usability (documentation, output & input formats)
Providing tiered-technical support to your users (Why doesn’t my code work?)
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27 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov27 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Questions for the DUAC
How many DUAC members use or have tried to use the BLS Data API? Use other agencies API? Which agencies?
One of the prerequisites to effectively use the BLS Data API is to know the BLS series identifiers (Series IDs). How do or did you discover the Series IDs to use for the API?
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28 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov28 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Questions for the DUAC
Are the current daily API use limitations reasonable?
Registered Unregistered Daily query limit 500 25
Series per query limit 50 25
Years per query limit 20 10
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29 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov29 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Questions for the DUAC
Is the API documentation sufficient—any gaps that would greatly help or would helped in your use of the API?
From your experience of using other agencies API’s, what key feature made it easier to use that you’d like to see in the BLS Data API?
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30 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov30 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Questions for the DUAC
We implemented human friendly features (e.g., XLSX file) into the API as Chrome and Firefox browsers allow GET and POST calls using add-ons. Should we develop more such features or primarily focus to improve automated systems interactions (machine to machine) with the API?
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Contact Information
31 — U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS • bls.gov
Amrit KohliDivision of Enterprise Web Systems
www.bls.gov202-691-6723