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Labor Market (Historical)

Overview

The Labor Market API lets you pull one US labor market series at a time: the jobs report (nonfarm payrolls, the unemployment rate, participation, hourly earnings), JOLTS job openings, hires, and quits, and weekly jobless claims. Monthly series run from 1939 and weekly claims from 1967, with the change from the prior period and from a year earlier computed for you. We source the data directly from authoritative government sources. Values are in each series’ own units (thousands of persons, percent, dollars per hour, persons); the changes are in the same units, plus a percent change over the year. To get started, please create an account and grab your API key at financialdatasets.ai. You will use the API key to authenticate your API requests.

Coverage

Series

Every concept is available seasonally adjusted (_sa) and, except the 4-week averages, not seasonally adjusted (_nsa). Monthly (date is the first day of the month): Weekly (date is the week-ending Saturday): You can fetch this list, with each series’ frequency and first available date, with a free GET request to: https://api.financialdatasets.ai/macro/labor/series/

Reading the fields

  • date is the reference period, not the release date: the first day of the month for monthly series (2026-08-01 is the August 2026 jobs report, published in early September) and the week-ending Saturday for weekly series (2026-09-19 is the week of September 13 to 19).
  • value is the published figure in the series’ units.
  • change_prior is value minus the prior period’s value: the prior month for monthly series, the prior week for weekly. Same units as value.
  • change_year is value minus the value one year earlier: the same month a year back, or the week 52 weeks back. Same units as value.
  • change_year_pct is change_year as a percent of the year-earlier value, rounded to one decimal. It is null for series measured in percent (the unemployment, participation, and insured unemployment rates): a rate’s change is stated in points, in change_year.
  • A change is null when the comparison period was not published.
  • History is the latest published values. When a past period is revised, the stored value is replaced. The newest week of a weekly series is the advance figure; it is replaced by the final figure when that is published.

Getting Started

There are only 3 steps for making a successful API call:
  1. Add your API key to the header of the request as X-API-KEY.
  2. Add the series parameter, which is required. Optionally add start_date and end_date (inclusive, YYYY-MM-DD). For a monthly series any day inside a month selects that month; for a weekly series you get every week-ending Saturday inside the window. With no dates you get the trailing five years.
  3. Execute the API request.
Rows come newest first in pages of up to 10. When more rows remain, the response includes a next_page_url; request it as-is to get the next page. See the pagination guide.

Example

Labor Market

Example Response

Authorizations

X-API-KEY
string
header
required

API key for authentication.

Query Parameters

series
string
required

The series id, e.g. payrolls_sa. Eight monthly concepts (payrolls, unemployment_rate, unemployment_rate_u6, participation_rate, hourly_earnings, job_openings, hires, quits) and five weekly ones (initial_claims, initial_claims_4_week, continued_claims, continued_claims_4_week, insured_unemployment_rate), each seasonally adjusted (_sa) and, except the 4-week averages, not (_nsa). Use the /macro/labor/series endpoint to get the list.

start_date
string

The first period to return, inclusive, in YYYY-MM-DD format; for a monthly series any day inside a month selects that month. Defaults to five years before end_date when both dates are omitted; omit it with an end_date to get all available history through that date.

end_date
string

The last period to return, inclusive, in YYYY-MM-DD format. Defaults to today.

cursor
string

Opaque pagination cursor from a previous response's next_page_url. When provided, all other query parameters are ignored: the cursor carries the original request's filters. Treat it as opaque; do not construct or modify it.

Response

Labor market response

labor
object[]
next_page_url
string

Absolute URL of the next page of results. Present only when more results remain; request it as-is to continue. Each page holds up to 10 records.