US BLS

Five Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys, exposed as standalone endpoints and as ?include=labor_context enrichment on SEC filings. The US BLS dataset is what makes cross-dataset queries (“what’s Apple’s headcount trend vs. their industry?”) a single API call instead of three.

Coverage

Survey	Frequency	Geo	What it measures
CES (Current Employment Statistics)	Monthly	National industry	Employment, average hourly earnings, hours worked by NAICS. Seasonally adjusted.
QCEW (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages)	Quarterly	County × NAICS	Employment counts and wage totals by county and industry.
OEWS (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics)	Annual	National + metro	Employment and wages by SOC occupation code.
JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey)	Monthly	Industry + state + region	Job openings, hires, quits, layoffs.
LAUS (Local Area Unemployment Statistics)	Monthly	State + county	Unemployment rate, labor force participation.

Known limitations

CPI, PPI, ECI, productivity, and NCS are not yet covered. On the post-1.0.0 roadmap. If any of these are load-bearing for your use case, let us know at hello@thesma.dev — it informs prioritisation.
Seasonal adjustment is survey-specific. CES values are seasonally adjusted by default; QCEW is not (BLS doesn’t publish seasonally-adjusted QCEW). Check the adjustment field on each response.
County-level wage data has disclosure suppression. QCEW suppresses values for very small industry-in-county cells to protect employer confidentiality. Expect occasional null fields at the county × NAICS intersection for thinly populated industries.

Endpoints

Industries (CES + employment trends)

Method	Path	Purpose
GET	`/v1/us/bls/industries`	List industries (NAICS) with BLS coverage.
GET	`/v1/us/bls/industries/{naics}`	Industry detail.
GET	`/v1/us/bls/industries/{naics}/employment`	Monthly employment time series (CES).
GET	`/v1/us/bls/industries/{naics}/employment/latest`	Most recent month snapshot.

Counties (QCEW + LAUS)

Method	Path	Purpose
GET	`/v1/us/bls/counties/{fips}/employment`	County employment by industry (QCEW).
GET	`/v1/us/bls/counties/{fips}/wages`	County wage totals by industry (QCEW).
GET	`/v1/us/bls/counties/{fips}/unemployment`	County unemployment rate (LAUS).
GET	`/v1/us/bls/counties/compare`	Multi-county comparison on a single metric.

States (LAUS)

Method	Path	Purpose
GET	`/v1/us/bls/states/{fips}/unemployment`	State unemployment rate and labor force (LAUS).
GET	`/v1/us/bls/states/compare`	Multi-state comparison.
GET	`/v1/us/bls/states/{fips}/turnover`	State-level JOLTS (openings, hires, quits, layoffs).

Occupations (OEWS)

Method	Path	Purpose
GET	`/v1/us/bls/occupations`	List SOC occupations.
GET	`/v1/us/bls/occupations/{soc}`	Occupation detail.
GET	`/v1/us/bls/occupations/{soc}/wages`	Wage distribution (mean, 10th / 25th / 50th / 75th / 90th percentiles).

Turnover (JOLTS)

Method	Path	Purpose
GET	`/v1/us/bls/industries/{naics}/turnover`	Industry-level openings, hires, quits, layoffs.
GET	`/v1/us/bls/industries/{naics}/turnover/latest`	Most recent month snapshot.
GET	`/v1/us/bls/regions/{region}/turnover`	Regional JOLTS (Northeast, South, Midwest, West).
GET	`/v1/us/bls/turnover/by-size`	JOLTS by establishment size.

Metrics catalogue

Method	Path	Purpose
GET	`/v1/us/bls/metrics`	All BLS metrics across surveys with their dimensions.
GET	`/v1/us/bls/metrics/{metric}`	Metric detail — source, unit, cadence, geographic level.

Cross-dataset enrichment on SEC

The ?include=labor_context parameter on any SEC company or financials endpoint adds a labor_context object with BLS data for the company’s NAICS industry:

{
  "labor_context": {
    "industry": {
      "naics_code": "334111",
      "naics_description": "Electronic computer manufacturing",
      "naics_match_level": "6-digit",
      "total_employment_thousands": 57.0,
      "employment_yoy_pct": -2.9,
      "avg_hourly_earnings": null,
      "earnings_yoy_pct": null,
      "data_period": "2026-02",
      "source": "CES",
      "adjustment": "sa"
    },
    "local_market": {
      "county_fips": "06085",
      "industry_employment": 8226,
      "industry_avg_weekly_wage": 6919,
      "total_employment": 1119379,
      "data_period": "2025-Q3",
      "source": "LAUS+QCEW",
      "match_level": "county"
    },
    "turnover": {
      "jolts_industry_code": "320000",
      "job_openings_rate": 3.7,
      "hires_rate": 2.0,
      "quits_rate": 1.1,
      "layoffs_and_discharges_rate": 0.8,
      "labour_market_tightness": 1.95,
      "data_period": "2026-02",
      "source": "JOLTS"
    },
    "compensation_benchmark": {
      "soc_code": "11-1011",
      "soc_title": "Chief Executives",
      "market_median_annual_wage": 206420,
      "market_mean_annual_wage": 262930,
      "reference_year": 2024,
      "source": "OEWS"
    },
    "summary": {
      "industry_hiring_trend": "declining",
      "local_unemployment_trend": "stable",
      "comp_to_market_ratio": null,
      "labour_market_tightness": 1.95
    },
    "data_freshness": {
      "ces_period": "2026-02",
      "qcew_period": "2025-Q3",
      "jolts_period": "2026-02",
      "laus_period": "2026-01",
      "oews_period": "2024",
      "sec_exec_comp_snapshot_date": "2026-01-08"
    }
  }
}

Real responses include additional fields per sub-object — see the API Reference for the complete schema. See the cross-dataset labor-context recipe for the full walk-through.

Screener filters

The /v1/us/sec/screener endpoint supports BLS-side filters for finding companies whose industry labor conditions meet a threshold:

industry_employment_yoy_min / _max
industry_earnings_yoy_min / _max
industry_openings_rate_min
state_unemployment_rate_max
county_unemployment_rate_max (uses the company’s HQ county)

Example: 5-year employment trend for pharmaceuticals (NAICS 3254)

curl -H "X-API-Key: $THESMA_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.thesma.dev/v1/us/bls/industries/3254/employment?from_date=2020-01&to_date=2025-12" \
  | jq '.data[] | {period, employment, avg_hourly_earnings}'

See the BLS industry-trend recipe for the full example with Python SDK and expected response shape.