Student or Teacher

Student or TeacherFrom junior high to college and beyond, students and teachers can use BLS to aid in their homework and course planning. Students can use our data in their career exploration and to help with their homework. Teachers can use our resources to enhance curriculums using real world examples such as the latest statistics on employment, prices, and wages. Below are some of the useful Resources and Tools BLS has to offer you.

Resources

Career Information for Students
Search over 60 occupations by what interests you or your favorite subject area. Find out what an occupation’s tasks are, how you get ready for it, salary information, and job outlook.

Occupational Outlook Handbook
Learn all about the occupations you find interesting. You can read about the nature of the work, education and training requirements, advancement opportunities, employment, salary, and ten-year job outlook for hundreds of occupations. The Handbook also lists related occupations and sources of additional information.

Occupational Outlook Quarterly
The articles in this quarterly magazine cover a wide range of topics relating to occupations and finding jobs – from job outlook by degree to finding an internship.

Spotlight on Statistics
Check out this user-friendly fact sheet that provides interesting information on a wide-range of topics in a colorful, graphic layout with charts, graphs and tables. Spotlights can range from facts about starting the school year to how Americans spend their time during Thanksgiving weekend.

Issues in Labor Statistics and The Editor’s Desk (TED)
Issues in Labor Statistics are succinct, up-to-the-minute, background papers on current topics. The Editor's Desk, issued every business day, highlights fresh information from all over the Bureau of Labor Statistics including intriguing BLS data that you might otherwise have missed.

Monthly Labor Review and Compensation & Working Conditions Online
Monthly Labor Review is our principal journal of fact, analysis, and research. Topics include the labor force, the economy, employment, inflation, productivity, wages, prices, and many more. CWC Online is an e-journal providing a current, convenient, user-friendly, and economical source of information and data on compensation and workplace issues.

Tools

Occupations by Education Level and Projected Growth
The “Postsecondary training category search” will help you find which jobs require a certain level of education or training. The “Occupation search” allows you to compare over 700 occupations by employment size, projected employment growth, earnings, the most significant source of postsecondary education or training, and unemployment rate.

Job Openings by Occupation
Job openings result from the need to replace workers who leave the occupation, as well as from new job growth.  This table contains information on annual average job openings from both sources, along with worker characteristics of the occupation.

Occupational Profiles
Occupational profiles can help you choose your classes or major by showing you where certain occupations are prevalent and how much you might expect to get paid for those occupations in different areas and industries.

At a Glance
The “At a Glance” pages give an economic overview of the U.S., areas throughout the country, and industries by compiling BLS data on these subjects. Just click on the links below.

Data Retrieval
Retrieve all types of BLS data, view our most requested statistics, create your own table, and access our research databases (FTP access) here. Students, you may wish to analyze Import/Export Price Indexes or use our Foreign Labor Statistics (FLS) to aid in class research or in writing an economics or international relations paper. Teachers, you could create a lesson plan, for example, that might involve looking at historical price changes from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to show how the purchasing power of a dollar has changed over time.

BLS Handbook of Methods
Read our detailed explanations of how the Bureau of Labor Statistics obtains and prepares the economic data we publish.