U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

Direct Answer

BLS publishes major U.S. labor-market and price data including the Consumer Price Index (CPI, the primary measure of consumer inflation), the Producer Price Index (PPI, upstream price pressures), the Employment Situation (nonfarm payrolls and the unemployment rate), the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), and the Employment Cost Index (ECI). These releases are scheduled in advance on the BLS release calendar and frequently move equity, bond, and currency markets.

What does CPI measure?

The Consumer Price Index measures the change in prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services. BLS maintains two main variants. CPI-U covers all urban consumers, which represents roughly 93% of the U.S. population and is the figure reported as the headline CPI in most news coverage. CPI-W covers urban wage earners and clerical workers only, a narrower subset, and is the index used to calculate Social Security cost-of-living adjustments.

Within each variant, BLS publishes both a seasonally adjusted and an unadjusted figure. The seasonally adjusted series strips out predictable seasonal patterns (for example, gasoline prices rising in summer driving season or clothing prices changing at the start of retail seasons) to make month-to-month comparisons more meaningful. The unadjusted figure is used for legal and contractual indexing purposes.

Core CPI excludes food and energy prices, which are excluded because they are more volatile and can obscure underlying inflation trends. Central banks and economists track Core CPI alongside headline CPI to distinguish persistent inflation from temporary supply shocks in commodity markets.

Investors track CPI for several reasons. First, the Federal Reserve has a statutory mandate to promote price stability, and CPI is one of the primary measures it monitors when evaluating whether that mandate is being met, even though the Fed's formal 2% target is expressed in terms of PCE (the Personal Consumption Expenditures index published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, not BLS). Second, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) use CPI as the index for adjusting their principal value, so CPI readings directly affect TIPS pricing and real yields. Third, many labor contracts, pension benefits, and government programs use CPI for annual cost-of-living adjustments.

A common misconception is that CPI is the Federal Reserve's formal inflation target. It is not. The Fed's 2% inflation target refers to headline PCE, not CPI. CPI tends to run somewhat higher than PCE because of methodological differences in how they handle consumer substitution between goods and how they weight different spending categories. Investors following monetary policy should track PCE alongside CPI for a more complete picture of what drives Fed decisions.

Monthly CPI releases typically arrive on the second or third Tuesday of the month following the reference period and are published at 8:30 AM Eastern time. Market reactions to CPI prints above or below consensus expectations can be large, particularly in interest rate futures and currency markets, because of the direct linkage to Fed policy expectations.

What does PPI measure?

The Producer Price Index measures the average change in prices received by domestic producers for their output. Unlike CPI, which measures prices at the consumer end of the distribution chain, PPI measures prices at the producer or wholesale level. BLS structures PPI around two main dimensions: stage of processing and industry.

The most widely followed PPI measure is Final Demand PPI, which covers goods and services sold to end users (consumers, businesses for capital investment, and government). Below final demand, BLS publishes a series of intermediate demand indexes covering goods and services sold to businesses for further processing. The intermediate demand series can show price pressures building at earlier stages of the production chain before they reach consumers.

Investors use PPI as a leading indicator for future CPI trends. When producers face higher input costs, they typically attempt to pass those costs through to customers over time. A sustained rise in PPI for final demand goods, particularly in categories with high consumer spending weight, often precedes a corresponding rise in CPI by one to three months, though the passthrough rate varies by industry and competitive conditions.

Core PPI, which excludes food, energy, and trade services margins, is the measure economists focus on most closely for underlying producer price trends. Trade services margins reflect the difference between selling and acquisition prices for retailers and wholesalers and can be volatile, so excluding them provides a cleaner read on fundamental cost pressures.

PPI is typically released one to two days before CPI for the same reference month. Bond market participants often watch PPI closely for early signals about whether CPI will come in above or below expectations, since PPI data become available first and provide partial information about the cost environment facing businesses.

What is the Employment Situation report?

The Employment Situation, published on the first Friday of each month at 8:30 AM Eastern time, is the most closely watched of all BLS releases. It covers two separate surveys conducted independently: the Establishment Survey (also called the payroll survey or Current Employment Statistics survey) and the Household Survey (also called the Current Population Survey).

Nonfarm payrolls, which measures how many jobs were added or lost across the U.S. economy excluding farm workers, private household employees, and nonprofit organization employees, comes from the Establishment Survey. This is the figure that receives the most market attention in the immediate aftermath of the release. A payroll figure meaningfully above consensus expectations typically pushes bond yields higher and strengthens the dollar, while a figure below consensus tends to push yields lower.

The unemployment rate comes from the Household Survey and measures the percentage of the labor force that is unemployed and actively looking for work. This is the U-3 rate, the official unemployment rate. BLS also publishes U-6, a broader measure that adds people who are marginally attached to the labor force (discouraged workers and others who want work but have not searched recently) and those working part time for economic reasons who would prefer full-time employment. U-6 is consistently higher than U-3 and captures a wider picture of labor market slack.

Average hourly earnings growth is the wage inflation component of the Employment Situation that markets watch most closely for monetary policy implications. When average hourly earnings rise faster than productivity growth, businesses face higher unit labor costs, which can feed into price increases for goods and services. The Fed monitors wage growth closely as a leading indicator of domestically generated inflation.

The labor force participation rate measures the percentage of the working-age civilian population that is either employed or actively seeking work. A rising participation rate can push the unemployment rate higher even when hiring is healthy, because more people are entering the labor force. Falling participation can make the unemployment rate appear lower than the actual state of labor demand would suggest. Tracking both the unemployment rate and participation rate together gives a more complete picture of labor market health.

Initial payroll estimates are revised twice in subsequent months as more complete payroll tax and employer survey data become available. A third revision comes with the annual benchmark revision, typically released in early February, which restates figures for the previous year using unemployment insurance tax filings as a more comprehensive count of covered employment. It is common for initial estimates to be revised by tens of thousands of jobs in either direction, which means a single monthly reading should be interpreted cautiously.

What are JOLTS and the Employment Cost Index?

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) is a monthly BLS release that measures job openings, hires, quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations. It is published about a month after the reference period, so it lags the Employment Situation by approximately four weeks.

The most closely watched component of JOLTS among economists is the quits rate, which measures the number of workers who voluntarily left their jobs as a percentage of total employment. Workers quit at higher rates when they are confident they can find better opportunities elsewhere, so a rising quits rate signals a tight labor market where workers have bargaining power. Rising quits tend to lead to stronger wage growth, because employers facing high voluntary turnover typically raise wages to retain staff. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and other Fed officials cited the JOLTS quits rate prominently during the 2021 to 2023 period when analyzing whether labor market tightness was contributing to wage-driven inflation.

The job openings count tells a related story from the employer side. A high ratio of job openings to unemployed workers indicates that employers are competing intensely for available workers, which also puts upward pressure on wages. The job openings-to-unemployed-workers ratio peaked above 2.0 during the post-pandemic labor market tightness of 2021 and 2022, far above historical norms, and the Fed monitored its gradual decline as evidence that labor market rebalancing was occurring.

The Employment Cost Index (ECI) is a quarterly measure published by BLS covering the change in wages, salaries, and employer costs for employee benefits. Because it controls for changes in the composition of employment (shifts in the mix of industries and occupations) rather than simply averaging reported wages, the ECI is considered a more precise measure of underlying compensation growth than average hourly earnings. The Federal Reserve has cited the ECI as a preferred measure for tracking wage inflation dynamics, and ECI releases can move markets when they come in well above or below consensus expectations for compensation growth.

How do I use the BLS release calendar?

BLS publishes its complete release schedule for the calendar year in advance at bls.gov/schedule/news_release. The schedule lists every planned release date for every major statistical series, allowing investors, economists, and policymakers to plan around scheduled data events. BLS does not delay or accelerate release dates for most reports, making the calendar reliable for forward planning.

All BLS principal economic indicator releases are embargoed until 8:30 AM Eastern time on the scheduled release date. BLS operates a lock-up facility in Washington, D.C., where journalists and analysts with prior access to the data are required to remain offline until the 8:30 AM embargo lifts. Market participants without lock-up access must wait until 8:30 AM to receive the data. Trading in equity index futures, Treasury futures, and currency markets often moves sharply in the minutes immediately following the release as the market prices in the difference between actual figures and consensus expectations.

BLS provides free programmatic access to its time series data through its public data API at api.bls.gov. The API allows developers and researchers to request data series by series ID, specify date ranges, and retrieve results in JSON format without registration for standard queries (registration provides higher query limits). The base documentation is available at bls.gov/developers. Series IDs can be found through the BLS Data Finder tool or by navigating to the specific program page for any release.

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis at fred.stlouisfed.org, also hosts the full library of BLS series with a more accessible charting and download interface. FRED updates its BLS series promptly after each release and provides additional tools for plotting multiple series together, computing percentage changes, and comparing data across different time periods, making it a practical starting point for research work that does not require the BLS API directly.

FAQ

Educational use

This page is educational and informational. It does not provide personalized investment advice and does not account for an individual's objectives, taxes, legal situation, time horizon, or risk tolerance. Verify rules, data, and release schedules from current BLS primary sources before relying on them for investment decisions.

References

• BLS: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• BLS: Consumer Price Indexes
• BLS: Producer Price Indexes
• BLS: Employment Situation

Reviewed by the Swoopr Editorial Team in September 2026.