BLS Occupational Wage Data
BLS_Occupational_Wage_Data queries GSA CALC+ BLS occupational wage data for pricing workflows.
Purpose
Use this tool when an agent needs wage-rate benchmarks, live filter discovery, or area/industry narrowing data that can be turned into pricing-model inputs.
When To Use
Typical questions this tool answers well:
Which BLS occupational wage rows match a labor category, geography, industry, or level?
Which occupation, state, industry, or area filter values are legal next steps for narrowing a query?
What current median or wage-stat summary data exists for a given slice of the CALC+ dataset?
Required Reading
Output Contract
Always returns:
summary
searchmode additionally returns:itemsemptyaggregationswhen explicitly requested throughfields_to_return
filtersmode additionally returns:occupation_namesoccupation_codesoccupation_levelsstatesindustriesareasmodeling_presets
Usage Notes
Start broad, inspect the returned filters, then narrow using the exact values the API returns.
Use
keywordas the occupation anchor. This is the most reliable way to search by BLS title or SOC code in the current CALC+ API.Treat wage rows as unburdened labor-rate inputs, not fully burdened bill rates or awarded prices.
Use
fields_to_returnto drop bulky top-level sections like rawaggregationsormodeling_presetswhen they are not needed.In
searchmode, the default response already omits rawaggregations. Addaggregationstofields_to_returnonly when you need the raw CALC+ bucket payload for debugging or advanced post-processing.Use
item_fields_to_returninsearchmode to keep only the row attributes needed for the current pricing step.filtersmode is the preferred way to discover legaloccupation_name,industry_code,area_name, andnormalized_area_namevalues before issuing a narrowsearchrequest.Location plus industry constraints matter. The CALC+ user guide states that BLS data for specific industry NAICS codes is not available for specific locations such as MSA and state; use
000000/All Industrieswhen narrowing to a specific state or area unless you have evidence otherwise.Areas are query-scoped. Cross-state metros only appear when the backend returns them for the current query, so do not assume every metro that touches a state will appear in every state-scoped result set.
Search Semantics
CALC+ search is BLS-taxonomy driven, not a synonym engine for business titles.
Exact BLS titles such as
Project Management Specialistswork well askeywordvalues.Broader fragments such as
projectoroperationsare useful for discovery.User phrasing like
Senior Program Managermay legitimately return zero rows even when a close BLS proxy title exists.
Field Meanings
rate: The CALC+ price field shown in the results table. This is the field used for median and average pricing summaries.h_mean: Local hourly mean wage for the returned geography and occupation.h_median: Local hourly median wage for the returned geography and occupation.national_h_mean: National hourly mean wage for the same occupation.national_h_median: National hourly median wage for the same occupation.areatype_code: CALC+ geography-type code. Treat this as backend geography metadata rather than a user-facing filter.summary.median_price: Median of the returnedratevalues.summary.wage_stats: Raw CALC+ stats aggregation over the returnedratevalues.
Examples
Discover likely BLS proxy titles for a user-friendly role label:
Narrow a discovered BLS title to Virginia senior rows:
Use GovTribe NAICS entity ids as an industry filter bridge:
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