Federal data guide
Trade, Immigration & Labor Data
A guide to the federal datasets behind international trade, immigration, and the American workforce — the sanctions and export-control lists, the actual flow of goods, the visa and labor-certification records, the wage and jobs statistics, the worker-protection enforcement, and the private-pension filings. Each links to a full deep-dive.
This domain spans the borders of the US economy and the workers inside it. Treasury (OFAC) and Commerce (BIS) control who and what can trade, while Census and CBP record what actually crosses the border. USCIS and the Labor Department’s OFLC run the employment-visa system, benchmarked to BLS wage data. And BLS, the Wage and Hour Division, and the PBGC measure jobs, pay, workplace injuries, and the private-pension system. The guides group the deep-dives by area and point to the two cross-dataset analyses that join them.
Trade, sanctions & export controls
Who and what can trade, and the goods that move.
- OFAC Sanctions Lists: The Treasury Database Every Financial Institution Must Screen Against — the sanctions lists
- OFAC Civil Penalties: The Federal Database Behind Sanctions Violations and Treasury Enforcement — sanctions enforcement
- OFAC SDN integration in the Federal Regulatory Data Hub: conditional GET, entity normalization, and sub-second screening — building SDN screening
- BIS Export Enforcement: The Federal Database Behind US Export Control Violations — export-control violations
- Trade.gov Consolidated Screening List: The Federal Index of Who US Exporters Cannot Do Business With — the consolidated screening list
- UFLPA Entity List: The Federal Database Behind Uyghur Forced Labor Supply Chain Enforcement — forced-labor supply-chain enforcement
- Census Foreign Trade Statistics: The HS-Code Import and Export Database Behind Every US Trade Policy Decision — imports and exports by HS code
- CBP US Trade Statistics: The Federal Dataset Behind Every Import and Export — customs trade flows
Immigration & visa labor
The employment-based visa pipeline.
- USCIS H-1B Data: The Federal Record of Who Sponsors Skilled Foreign Workers — H-1B petitions
- DOL OFLC Disclosures: The Federal Record of Employer Visa-Labor Applications — labor-certification filings
- DOL OFLC Visa Disclosures: The Federal Database Behind H-1B, H-2A, and H-2B Wage Records — visa wage records
- DOL H-2A and H-2B Visa Disclosures: Tracing Temporary Worker Certifications in Agriculture and Hospitality — seasonal-worker visas
Jobs, wages & worker protection
The labor market and the enforcement of labor law.
- BLS Current Employment Statistics: The Monthly Jobs Report Behind Every Payroll Number — the monthly jobs report
- BLS JOLTS: The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Data Behind Every Fed Labor Market Statement — job openings and turnover
- BLS OEWS: The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics Behind Every Salary Benchmark — the wage benchmark
- BLS QCEW: The County-Level Employment and Wages Dataset Behind Every Local Economic Analysis — county employment and wages
- BLS Occupational Injuries: The SOII Dataset Behind 2.8 Million Annual Workplace Injuries — workplace injuries and illnesses
- DOL Wage and Hour Division: The Federal Enforcement Database Behind $300 Million in Annual Back-Wage Recoveries — wage-theft enforcement
- DOL Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims: The Thursday Morning Data Release That Moves Financial Markets — weekly jobless claims
Private pensions
The retirement-plan filings and the federal backstop.
- DOL Form 5500: The Annual Filing That Exposes Every Private Pension and 401(k) Plan — every private retirement plan
- PBGC Trusteed Pensions: The Federal Record of Every Dead Corporate Pension — failed pensions the PBGC took over
- The graveyard of pensions: using PBGC data to track terminated defined-benefit plans — terminated pension plans
Cross-dataset analyses
Synthesis guides that join several of the datasets above.
- Trade, Sanctions, and Export Controls: Joining the Rules to the Goods That Move — rules joined to trade flows
- The Employment-Immigration Pipeline: From Labor Certification to H-1B Approval — labor cert → H-1B, benchmarked to wages
More guides at Federal data guides, or browse all writing and the full dataset catalog.