"Is employment below or above the level of last month?" "What has happened to prices during the past month?" Such questions—and thousands of others about a wide range of labor related topics—are answered by personnel of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). When the BLS was established by Congress on June 27, 1884, its mission was stated in these words: "The general design and duties of the Bureau of Labor shall be to acquire and diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with labor, in the more general and comprehensive sense of that word, and especially upon its relation to capital, the hours of labor, social, intellectual, and moral prosperity." The BLS is an independent national statistical agency that collects, processes, analyzes, and disseminates essential statistical data to the citizens of the United States, the U...