Economic Data economicdata.dev

Time series · laus

Local area unemployment (LAUS)

Monthly labor force, employment, unemployment and unemployment rate from the BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics program for every state (from 1976), metropolitan and micropolitan area and county (from 1990), not seasonally adjusted, plus BLS's seasonally adjusted series for states and three metros. October 2025 is missing for the 50 states, DC and their substate areas because the household survey was not collected during the federal shutdown; those months are null with footnote X and are never interpolated. The latest month is preliminary.

Updates
Monthly
Coverage
—
Current version
—
Last published
—
Validation
—
License
US Government work
Commercial use
Allowed

Chart

Local area unemployment (LAUS)

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Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Show the data as a table

The table appears once the data has loaded.

Use the API

Each series and location is its own small file. The examples follow the series and location picked above. See the docs for versions, caching and errors.

curl

# One series for one place (.json or .csv)
curl -s "https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/laus/nsa/us-county-02201.json"

# Every series and place in one file
curl -sO "https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/laus/download/laus.csv"

Python (polars)

import polars as pl

# One series for one place
df = pl.read_csv("https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/laus/nsa/us-county-02201.csv")

# Every series and place, with series and location columns
everything = pl.read_parquet("https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/laus/download/laus.parquet")

JavaScript

const res = await fetch("https://api.economicdata.dev/v1/laus/nsa/us-county-02201.json");
if (!res.ok) throw new Error((await res.json()).detail); // errors are problem+json
const { meta, data } = await res.json();
console.log(meta.location_name, data.at(-1)); // { date, value, ... }

Downloads

The whole dataset in one file, with series and location columns. Parquet keeps the column types and is much smaller.

Schema and series

Each series file has these columns. The bulk downloads add series and location columns in front.

Column Type Unit Can be empty Description
date month (YYYY-MM) — no —
labor_force integer persons yes Civilian labor force by place of residence
employed integer persons yes Employed persons (BLS measure "employment")
unemployed integer persons yes Unemployed persons (BLS measure "unemployment")
unemployment_rate number percent yes Unemployed as a percent of the labor force
preliminary true / false — no True where BLS marks the estimate preliminary (footnote P)
footnotes text — yes BLS footnote codes for the month

Series

Series id Name
nsa Not seasonally adjusted (every state, CBSA and county)
sa Seasonally adjusted (states, Detroit, Cleveland and Seattle metros)

Locations

Covers all 57 US states and equivalents (ids: us- plus the USPS code (us-ca, us-dc)); all 3,222 US counties and equivalents (ids: us-county- plus the 5-digit FIPS code); stations whose ids match us-cbsa-\d{5}; 4 more named places.

Location id Name
us-county-02201 Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan Census Area, AK (through 2009)
us-county-02232 Skagway-Hoonah-Angoon Census Area, AK (through 2009)
us-county-02261 Valdez-Cordova Census Area, AK (through 2019)
us-county-02280 Wrangell-Petersburg Census Area, AK (through 2009)

Place names come from the shared location registry; see Sources.

Source and license

Source
BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS)
Publisher
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
License
US Government work (public domain in the United States) (LicenseRef-US-Government-Work)
Commercial use
Allowed

Credit the source with this exact text:

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics (https://www.bls.gov/lau/).

Checked every 1 day. If the source hasn't changed in 45 days, the status page flags it as stale.

Endpoints

Every URL for this dataset. To pin the current version, put it after the id: /v1/laus@<version>. The API reference describes each response.

What URL
Metadata: version, coverage, downloads, validation /v1/laus
Versions and monthly snapshots /v1/laus/versions
Series and locations /v1/laus/locations
Not seasonally adjusted (every state, CBSA and county) (JSON) /v1/laus/nsa/{location}.json
Not seasonally adjusted (every state, CBSA and county) (CSV) /v1/laus/nsa/{location}.csv
Seasonally adjusted (states, Detroit, Cleveland and Seattle metros) (JSON) /v1/laus/sa/{location}.json
Seasonally adjusted (states, Detroit, Cleveland and Seattle metros) (CSV) /v1/laus/sa/{location}.csv
Whole dataset (CSV) /v1/laus/download/laus.csv
Whole dataset (Parquet) /v1/laus/download/laus.parquet