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BLS measures price movement from the perspectives of American consumers, producers, and importers through the use of price indexes. Measures for tracking changes in the cost of labor, free from the influence of employment shifts among occupations and industries, are also available, as are average retail price levels for selected food and energy items. Information is also produced on the spending habits of consumers at the national, regional, and metropolitan area levels, including data on expenditures, income, and demographic characteristics.
BLS produces extensive information on wages, earnings, and benefits by geographic area, occupation, and industry. These data generally include average and median pay levels, sometimes cross-classified by worker characteristics such as gender, union status, or private versus public sector employment. Information is also available regarding employer benefit provisions and costs, as well as rates of compensation change over time.
BLS publishes a broad spectrum of information on state and area employment and unemployment. Monthly information on job growth and employment by industry is available for all states and hundreds of metropolitan areas. More extensive industry data are available for states and counties on a quarterly basis. Data for gross job gains and job losses, which underlie net employment change, are also produced. Statistics related to unemployment rates and the size of the labor force are available for all states, counties, and nearly 400 metropolitan areas. Additionally, alternative measures of labor underutilization, which include discouraged workers and those working part-time for economic reasons, are produced for all states. The Bureau also publishes annual reports for other demographic characteristics such as minimum wage workers, employment by occupation, and employment by union status.
BLS publishes information on the rate and number of work related injuries, illnesses, and fatal injuries, and how these statistics vary by incident, industry, geography, occupation, and other characteristics. National data contain the greatest level of detail, but a significant amount of information is available at the state level. For many individual metropolitan areas BLS publishes total work-related fatal injury counts, as well as selected industry and occupational details for the largest metropolitan areas.