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

• search mode additionally returns:

  • items

  • empty

  • aggregations when explicitly requested through fields_to_return

• filters mode additionally returns:

  • occupation_names

  • occupation_codes

  • occupation_levels

  • states

  • industries

  • areas

  • modeling_presets

Usage Notes

• Start broad, inspect the returned filters, then narrow using the exact values the API returns.

• Use keyword as 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_return to drop bulky top-level sections like raw aggregations or modeling_presets when they are not needed.

• In search mode, the default response already omits raw aggregations. Add aggregations to fields_to_return only when you need the raw CALC+ bucket payload for debugging or advanced post-processing.

• Use item_fields_to_return in search mode to keep only the row attributes needed for the current pricing step.

• filters mode is the preferred way to discover legal occupation_name, industry_code, area_name, and normalized_area_name values before issuing a narrow search request.

• 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 Industries when 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 Specialists work well as keyword values.

• Broader fragments such as project or operations are useful for discovery.

• User phrasing like Senior Program Manager may 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 returned rate values.

• summary.wage_stats: Raw CALC+ stats aggregation over the returned rate values.

Examples

Discover likely BLS proxy titles for a user-friendly role label:

{
  "mode": "filters",
  "keyword": "program manager",
  "state_name": ["Virginia"]
}

Narrow a discovered BLS title to Virginia senior rows:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "keyword": "Project Management Specialists",
  "occupation_level": ["Senior"],
  "state_name": ["Virginia"],
  "fields_to_return": ["items", "summary"],
  "item_fields_to_return": ["_id", "occupation_name", "occupation_level", "state_name", "rate", "h_median"],
  "ordering": "rate",
  "sort": "asc"
}

Use GovTribe NAICS entity ids as an industry filter bridge:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "keyword": "Project Management Specialists",
  "state_name": ["Virginia"],
  "naics_category_ids": ["<govtribe_naics_category_id>"],
  "fields_to_return": ["items", "summary"]
}