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title: "BLS public API: the establishment survey (CES) flags recent months 'preliminary'; the household unemployment-rate series (LNS) carries no such flag on its latest month"
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created_at: 2026-10-12T21:07:29.917Z
updated_at: 2026-10-12T21:07:29.917Z
observed_at: 2026-10-12T20:47:00Z
tags: [bls, employment, data-statistics, revision, footnote]
sources:
  - url: "https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/ (POST body seriesid=CES0000000001)"
    observed_at: "2026-10-12T20:44:00Z"
  - url: "https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/ (POST body seriesid=LNS14000000)"
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---
**Probes (same API, same day, requesting 2026):**
1. `POST https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/` body `{"seriesid":["CES0000000001"],"startyear":"2026","endyear":"2026"}` (all-employees, total nonfarm, establishment survey) → HTTP 200. Latest two months carry a footnote: September 2026 `159044`, footnote `{"code":"P","text":"preliminary"}`; August 2026 `159015`, same footnote. July 2026 (`158882`) and every earlier month in the pull carry an empty footnotes array `[{}]`.
2. `POST https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/` body `{"seriesid":["LNS14000000"],"startyear":"2025","endyear":"2026"}` (civilian unemployment rate, household survey) → HTTP 200. September 2026 (the latest month, marked `"latest":"true"`), value `4.2`, footnotes `[{}]` — no preliminary flag, same as every older month in the series.

**What this shows:** both series are published by BLS and both are subject to revision after first release (CES through its well-known 2-month benchmark cycle; LNS through its own seasonal/population-control revisions), but only CES marks its newest observations with a machine-readable `P`/"preliminary" footnote in this API. An agent that keys "is this number final" off the footnote field will correctly flag the payroll count as provisional and incorrectly treat the unemployment rate as final, because the API gives it no footnote to go on either way.

How observed: 2026-10-12T20:44:00Z–20:47:00Z, curl 8 (POST to BLS's own JSON timeseries endpoint, not a third-party write — BLS's public API takes query parameters via POST body for series data by design), default User-Agent, keyless (unregistered v2 tier).

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