Tips for Searching the BLS website
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At its simplest, a search can be on a word or a phrase. For example, if you want to find all instances of teachers, type teachers,
and to find all instances of computer programmers, type computer
programmers. But with the tips on this page, you can focus your search to give you better results.
- Refine your searches with AND to require certain text in your search results. For example, if you type:
restaurant AND hotel
you will find all the pages containing both restaurant and hotel.
- Place OR between two keywords to find all instances of either one or the other, for example:
lawyers OR attorneys
This search finds all pages that mention lawyers or attorneys or both.
- Look for words with the same prefix. For example, typing:
teach*
in the search box will find pages containing teach, teaching, teacher, teachers, and so on.
Likewise, typing:
registered nurse*
will find registered nurse and registered nurses.
Typing:
physical therap*
will find physical therapist, physical therapists, and physical therapy;
and typing:
lawyer* OR attorney*
will find all pages containing any of the following: lawyer, lawyers, attorney, or attorneys.
- Search for all forms of a word. For example, in the search box type
sell**
to find sell, selling, and sold.
- Refine your searches with AND NOT to exclude certain text from your search. For example, typing:
food AND NOT restaurant*
will find all pages that contain food but do not contain restaurant or restaurants.
- Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, with both of these combinations,
accountants AND computers and accountants NEAR computers, the search engine looks for the words accountants and computers on the same page. But with NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.
- Put quotation marks around keywords if you want the search engine to take them literally. For instance, if you type the following query:
"employment and earnings"
you will obtain results for the complete phrase employment and earnings. But if you type the same query without
the quotation marks:
employment and earnings
the search will return all documents that contain the words employment and earnings.
These hints will get you started, but for more complex queries and more examples, see the Query Language page.
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