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BLS Restricted Data Access
Bureau of Labor Statistics > BLS Restricted Data Access > Home

Confidentiality and Disclosure

Confidentiality of BLS Restricted Data

When collecting data, BLS makes a pledge of confidentiality to its respondents. This pledge varies depending on the context of each survey, but the standard BLS confidentiality pledge promises that data collected are used for statistical purposes only.

As a BLS-designated agent authorized to access and handle restricted BLS data, you are required to maintain the confidentiality of BLS data in accordance with the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 (CIPSEA PDF).  

More information concerning confidentiality of BLS data collected for statistical purposes can be found here: Confidentiality of Data Collected by BLS for Statistical Purposes.

 

Disclosure

Subject to approval by the RDARB or the BLS Project Coordinator, researchers may be allowed to merge outside data with restricted BLS datasets.

For projects conducted onsite or at an FSRDC, any resulting merged datasets (with or without identifiers) are considered confidential and may not be removed from the BLS national office or from the FSRDC without clearance from the BLS Project Coordinator.

When the researcher has completed work onsite or at an FSRDC, the BLS Project Coordinator will conduct a disclosure (or confidentiality) review of all project outputs to ensure that data confidentiality is protected. If you conducted work at an FSRDC, the RDC Administrator will facilitate your output clearance through the BLS Project Coordinator. Once cleared, your BLS Project Coordinator will email you the outputs.

Disclosure criteria vary for different BLS datasets. Please contact BLS if you have questions or concerns regarding the disclosure requirements for the data you are seeking.

 

Publication

You should provide your BLS Project Coordinator and/or the Restricted Data Access Admin group with a copy of or link to your final project outputs, such as any journal articles, presentations, dissertations, or other publicly available work upon their publication or release.

You should also submit to your BLS Project Coordinator a 200- to 300-word abstract summarizing any published works resulting from research.

BLS reserves the right to make the final outputs and the abstract you submit publicly available on the BLS website or through other means of dissemination.

You are required to include the following disclaimer in all final publicly released reports, work products, or research outputs:

"This research was conducted with restricted access to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the BLS."