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# Timeline

                - BLS History
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Below are major milestones in BLS history, grouped by decade. Click on the links within the timeline for more information.

On This Page:
                  - 2020s
                  - 2010s
                  - 2000s
                  - 1990s
                  - 1980s
                  - 1970s
                  - 1960s
                  - 1950s
                  - 1940s
                  - 1910s
                  - 1900s
                  - 1890s
                  - 1880s

### 1880s

              - 1884  Bureau of Labor created in the Department of Interior.
              - 1886  Published  *First Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor: Industrial Depressions* .
              - 1888  Began first  consumer expenditure  survey.

### 1890s

              - 1891  Investigated the effects of tariff legislation on wages and prices.
              - 1898  Published  Hand and Machine Labor , providing information on the effect of machinery costs of production, productivity, wages, and employment in selected industries.

### 1900s

              - 1902  First published the wholesale prices collection, later called the  Producer Price Indexes .

### 1910s

              - 1912  Introduced series on industrial accidents.
              - 1913  Began  Consumer Price Indexes .
              - 1913  Moved to the Department of Labor.
              - 1915  Began first monthly studies of employment and payrolls (later called the  Current Employment Statistics  program).
              - 1915  Published first  Monthly Review  (later called the  *Monthly Labor Review* ).
              - 1916  Began first labor market information cooperative agreements with states.

### 1940s

              - 1940  Began  industry productivity studies  program.  
              - 1942  Established first regional offices.
              - 1945  Began providing training for international economists and statisticians.
              - 1947  Established Business Research Advisory Council and the Labor Research Advisory Council.
              - 1947  Produced first annual measures of  output per hour .
              - 1947  Released first report on  work stoppages .
              - 1948  Began publishing collective bargaining settlements.
              - 1949  Published first  *Occupational Outlook Handbook* .

### 1950s

              - 1959  Gained responsibility for financing and analyzing the household survey (later called the  Current Population Survey ) and publishing the results.
              - 1959  Published first  labor productivity indexes  for the total private and private nonfarm business sectors.

### 1960s

              - 1960  Began conducting an annual nationwide survey, (later incorporated into the  National Compensation Survey ), which became the basis for comparing federal and private-sector pay under legislation passed in 1962 and 1971.
              - 1962  Produced first major international comparative study on unemployment.
              - 1966  Produced first  projections of the labor force , industry output and employment, and occupational employment and job openings.

### 1970s

              - 1971  Began  International Prices Program  by establishing export price indexes.
              - 1971  Began collecting data (in cooperation with 15 states and the Employment and Training Administration) on occupational employment through the  Occupational Employment Statistics  program.
              - 1973  Established import price indexes, as part of the  International Prices Program .
              - 1973  Began  Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses , mandated by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
              - 1976  Began the  Employment Cost Index .
              - 1978  Began direct online computer access to more than 150,000 time series ( LABSTAT ).
              - 1979  Introduced the first comprehensive study of the incidence and provisions on employee benefits )later called the  Employee Benefits Survey ).

### 1980s

              - 1983  Published first  multifactor productivity  measures.
              - 1983  Assumed full responsibility from the Employment and Training Administration for federal-state cooperative programs on labor market information, including  Current Employment Statistics ,  Local Area Unemployment Statistics ,  Occupational Employment Statistics , and in 1984,  Employment and Wages  (later called the  Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages ).
              - 1984  Began  Mass Layoff Statistics  program.
              - 1985  Assumed responsibility from Employment and Training Administration for the  National Longitudinal Surveys .
              - 1986  Published first  Employer Costs for Employee Compensation  data.

### 1990s

              - 1990  Began using electronic data collection with the computer assisted telephone interview in the  Current Employment Statistics  survey.
              - 1992  Introduced revisions to the Occupational Safety and Health Statistics program, including the first nationwide  Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries  and new data on worker characteristics and the circumstances of workplace injuries and illnesses.
              - 1995  Established website at  www.bls.gov .
              - 1996  Began collecting occupational wage data, in addition to occupational employment data for every state in the  Occupational Employment Statistics  program.

### 2000s

              - 2000  Established the  Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee  along with the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau.
              - 2002  Released the first national monthly  Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey  data providing the number and rate of job openings, hires and separations.
              - 2002  Congress passed and the President signed the  Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act .
              - 2003  Introduced  Business Employment Dynamic  data from the  Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages , showing the job gains from opening and expanding establishments and job losses from closing and contracting establishments.
              - 2004  Published the  American Time Use Survey  annual estimates providing information on the way Americans spend their time.
              - 2007  Established the  Data Users Advisory Committee  to replace the Business and Labor Research Advisory Councils.
              - 2008  Stopped printing and mailing news releases to subscribers, relying on email and the web for distribution instead.
              - 2009  Published, for the first time, labor force estimates for people with  disabilities  in the  Current Population Survey .

### 2010s

              - 2010  Expanded hours and earnings data from the  Current Employment Statistics  program to include “all employees” in addition to “production and nonsupervisory employees.”
              - 2010  Established the  Technical Advisory Committee  to advise BLS on statistical methodology and other technical matters related to the collection and analysis of BLS data.
              - 2011  Revised data provided to meet the requirements of the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act to include information from both the  National Compensation Survey  and the  Occupational Employment Statistics  program.
              - 2012  Released first-ever  green jobs  information.
              - 2012  Tweeted for the first time from  @BLS_gov .
              - 2014  Introduced the  Final Demand – Intermediate Demand  system for the  Producer Price Indexes  program, measuring change in prices received by producers of goods, services, and construction products for final use (to consume or invest) or intermediate use (by businesses as inputs to further production).
              - 2014  Began using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques to  automate coding  in the  Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses .
              - 2014  Released  Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages  generated  hurricane zone maps  showing the potential risks to businesses and jobs from hurricanes on the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts.
              - 2016  Joined the  Federal Statistical Research Data Center  network to expand the availability of BLS microdata.
              - 2016  Published, for the first time, data from the  Occupational Requirements Survey  about the physical demands, mental requirements, education and training, and environmental conditions of jobs.
              - 2018  Introduced locality of destination export price indexes and the U.S. terms of trade indexes in the  International Price Program .
              - 2018  Published  Current Population Survey  findings on  electronically mediated employment , or work that was obtained through a website or app.
              - 2019  Began updating employment projections annually instead of every 2 years.

### 2020s

              - 2020  With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, introduced new survey questions looking at the effect of the pandemic on labor market activity, surveyed businesses about pandemic changes to their operations and their sick leave policies, introduced new methods to ensure that productivity data reflected the rapid changes in employment at the start of the pandemic, and collected critical information on employer-reported cases of respiratory virus. Also introduced  innovations in data collection methods .
              - 2021  Released state data for the first time from the  Productivity  program and from the  Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey .
              - 2022  Expanded monthly labor force data to include American Indians and Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, and People of Two or More Races.

**Last Modified Date:** August 4, 2023

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