Download and Process Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

Downloads and processes data from Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) flat files. Supports multiple data sources including CPI, ECI, JOLTS, CPS, CES, and others. The function retrieves the main data file along with associated metadata files, merges them, and returns a tidy tibble ready for analysis.

Usage

getBLSFiles(data_source, email)

Arguments

data_source

Character string specifying the BLS data source. Available options:

"cpi": Consumer Price Index - current data
"eci": Employment Cost Index (quarterly)
"cex": Consumer Expenditure Survey
"jolts": Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey
"cps": Current Population Survey
"ces": Current Employment Statistics - all series
"ces_allemp": Current Employment Statistics - all employees, seasonally adjusted
"ces_total": Current Employment Statistics - total nonfarm employment
"averageprice": Average price data - current
"food": Average price data - food items
"se": State and metro area employment
"su": State and local area unemployment

email

Character string with your email address. Required by BLS for identifying API users. Set as the HTTP User-Agent header.

Value

A tibble containing the merged data with columns for:

series_id: Unique identifier for each data series
date: Observation date
value: Numeric data value
...: Additional metadata columns vary by data source (e.g., item codes, industry codes, area codes)

Details

The function constructs URLs to BLS flat files at https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/, downloads the series metadata and auxiliary lookup tables, then downloads and merges the main data file. Date parsing handles both monthly (most sources) and quarterly (ECI) data frequencies.

Examples

# \donttest{
  # Download CPI data
  cpi_data <- getBLSFiles("cpi", "your.email@example.com")
#> Downloading series file...
#> Downloading file: item
#> Downloading file: area
#> Downloading main data file: data.0.Current
#> Warning: There was 1 warning in `dplyr::mutate()`.
#> ℹ In argument: `value = as.numeric(value)`.
#> Caused by warning:
#> ! NAs introduced by coercion
#> Merging main data with series metadata...

  # Download JOLTS data
  jolts_data <- getBLSFiles("jolts", "your.email@example.com")
#> Downloading series file...
#> Downloading file: industry
#> Downloading file: state
#> Downloading file: dataelement
#> Downloading file: sizeclass
#> Downloading main data file: data.1.AllItems
#> Warning: One or more parsing issues, call `problems()` on your data frame for details,
#> e.g.:
#>   dat <- vroom(...)
#>   problems(dat)
#> Merging main data with series metadata...
# }