US work stoppages: monthly strike & lockout panel
Monthly US work stoppages (strikes and lockouts involving 1,000+ workers, one full shift or longer) from the BLS Work Stoppages bulk files (keyless): one row per month, 1981-01 to the latest published month, with the six BLS measures — stoppages beginning, workers beginning, workers in effect, stoppages in effect, days of idleness (thousands of workdays), and days idle as percent of estimated working time. Method: monthly bulk rows pivoted wide; censored/unavailable cells kept as NULLs with flags; preliminary (footnote P) months flagged. Derived signals: trailing-12-month averages of days idle, workers in effect, and stoppages in effect, plus year-over-year percent change in days idle. Units as the annual panel. Caveats: updates land ~3 weeks after month end; monthly figures are preliminary until BLS issues final monthly + annual figures in February; the percent-of-worktime series was archived by BLS after April 2024 (NULLs thereafter, never imputed).
- Rows
- 548
- Columns
- 19
- Source cadence
- Monthly
- Last refreshed
- Sep 28, 2026
- Theme
- labor
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| date | string | First day of the month, ISO (primary key, join key). (unit: ISO date) |
| year | integer | Calendar year (join key). (unit: year) |
| month | integer | Month of year 1-12 (join key). (unit: month) |
| country | string | Country covered. |
| country_code | string | ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code (join key). |
| stoppages_beginning | integer | Number of work stoppages involving 1,000+ workers beginning in the period (BLS measure 100). (unit: count) |
| workers_beginning_000s | float | Workers directly involved in stoppages beginning in the period (BLS measure 010). (unit: thousands of workers) |
| workers_in_effect_000s | float | Workers directly involved in stoppages in effect in the period — those beginning in the period plus those that began earlier and continued into it (BLS measure 020). NULL in the annual panel before 1981 (monthly series starts 1981). (unit: thousands of workers) |
| stoppages_in_effect | integer | Number of work stoppages in effect in the period (BLS measure 200). NULL in the annual panel before 1981. (unit: count) |
| days_idle_000s | float | Total workdays lost by workers directly involved in stoppages in effect in the period (BLS measure 001). Excludes indirect/secondary idleness from material shortages or lack of services. (unit: thousands of workdays) |
| days_idle_pct_of_worktime | float | Workdays lost in stoppages in effect as a percent of workdays in the period x total national employment (private household, forestry, and fishery employees excluded; BLS measure 002). NULL when BLS reports the cell as unavailable ('-') or censored below 0.005; the series was archived by BLS after April 2024 and is NULL thereafter — never imputed. (unit: percent) |
| days_idle_pct_censored_low | integer | 1 when BLS footnoted the percent cell 'Less than 0.005' (the value is stored NULL); 0 otherwise. (unit: flag) |
| is_preliminary | integer | 1 when BLS flagged any of the period's cells preliminary (footnote P). Monthly figures stay preliminary until BLS issues final monthly + annual figures in February. (unit: flag) |
| days_idle_000s_12m_avg | float | Trailing 12-month (inclusive) average of days_idle_000s. NULL for the first 11 months. (unit: thousands of workdays) |
| workers_in_effect_000s_12m_avg | float | Trailing 12-month (inclusive) average of workers_in_effect_000s. NULL for the first 11 months. (unit: thousands of workers) |
| stoppages_in_effect_12m_avg | float | Trailing 12-month (inclusive) average of stoppages_in_effect. NULL for the first 11 months. (unit: count) |
| days_idle_000s_yoy_pct | string | Year-over-year percent change of days_idle_000s vs the same month a year earlier. NULL when the prior-year cell is NULL or zero, or fewer than 12 months of history exist. (unit: percent) |
| row_hash | string | Deterministic 16-hex row hash of the panel + period (idempotency). |
| source_url | string | Bulk data file URL (provenance). (unit: URL) |
First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.
| date | year | month | country | country_code | stoppages_beginning | workers_beginning_000s | workers_in_effect_000s | stoppages_in_effect | days_idle_000s | days_idle_pct_of_worktime | days_idle_pct_censored_low | is_preliminary | days_idle_000s_12m_avg | workers_in_effect_000s_12m_avg | stoppages_in_effect_12m_avg | days_idle_000s_yoy_pct | row_hash | source_url |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1981-01-01 | 1,981 | 1 | United States | USA | 6 | 12 | 29.6 | 12 | 257.9 | 0.01 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | 9bfe5b82c3ee4ad7 | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
| 1981-02-01 | 1,981 | 2 | United States | USA | 7 | 10.7 | 20.9 | 10 | 118.5 | 0.01 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | 51ab3b802e002e09 | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
| 1981-03-01 | 1,981 | 3 | United States | USA | 16 | 201.6 | 207.8 | 20 | 861.8 | 0.04 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | 971549bb775fd32b | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
| 1981-04-01 | 1,981 | 4 | United States | USA | 17 | 48 | 223.5 | 27 | 4,085.2 | 0.2 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | 5f6e446492e06c38 | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
| 1981-05-01 | 1,981 | 5 | United States | USA | 18 | 85.1 | 259 | 27 | 4,454 | 0.24 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | d7ab5101562bd5b8 | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
| 1981-06-01 | 1,981 | 6 | United States | USA | 30 | 200.1 | 415.1 | 43 | 2,618.3 | 0.13 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | 9e1ed78c783fb76a | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
| 1981-07-01 | 1,981 | 7 | United States | USA | 23 | 80.1 | 125.4 | 38 | 1,575.5 | 0.08 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | 0f1240abf997709a | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
| 1981-08-01 | 1,981 | 8 | United States | USA | 9 | 36.2 | 86.6 | 17 | 1,017.9 | 0.05 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | 637ca91f22baa23f | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
| 1981-09-01 | 1,981 | 9 | United States | USA | 5 | 26.3 | 65.2 | 10 | 898.8 | 0.05 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | e0f2044cc1f166c6 | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
| 1981-10-01 | 1,981 | 10 | United States | USA | 7 | 13.4 | 48.3 | 11 | 733.6 | 0.04 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — | beb6dcd9bce66b76 | https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ws/ws.data.1.AllData |
Profiled Sep 28, 2026 from snapshot 20260928T015350Z-99fd0b694687
Measured- Completeness
- 97.1%
- Rows
- 548
- Columns
- 19
- Columns with gaps
- 5
| Column | Missing | Distinct | Range | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| datevarchar | 0% | 524 | — |
|
| yearbigint | 0% | 44 | 1,981 → 2,026median 2,003 | |
| monthbigint | 0% | 13 | 1 → 12median 6 | |
| countryvarchar | 0% | 1 | — |
|
| country_codevarchar | 0% | 1 | — |
|
| stoppages_beginningbigint | 0% | 23 | 0 → 30median 2 | 5 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| workers_beginning_000sdouble | 0% | 319 | 0 → 615.8median 6.35 | 6 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| workers_in_effect_000sdouble | 0% | 387 | 0 → 699.7median 16.15 | 6 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| stoppages_in_effectbigint | 0% | 29 | 0 → 43median 4 | 6 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| days_idle_000sdouble | 0% | 558 | 0 → 8,673median 152.95 | 6 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| days_idle_pct_of_worktimedouble | 40.9% | 17 | 0 → 0.41median 0.01 | 4 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| days_idle_pct_censored_lowbigint | 0% | 2 | 0 → 1median 0 | |
| is_preliminarybigint | 0% | 2 | 0 → 1median 0 | |
| days_idle_000s_12m_avgdouble | 2% | 558 | 5.08 → 1,702median 251.18 | 12 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| workers_in_effect_000s_12m_avgdouble | 2% | 490 | 0.8583 → 140.44median 28.86 | 12 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| stoppages_in_effect_12m_avgdouble | 2% | 137 | 0.5 → 18.75median 4.5 | 11 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| days_idle_000s_yoy_pctdouble | 8% | 543 | -100 → 11,125median -10.8 | 6 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| row_hashvarchar | 0% | 527 | — |
|
| source_urlvarchar | 0% | 1 | — |
|
- Current
20260928T015350Z-99fd0b694687 · sha256 99fd0b694687…
548 rows · first snapshot
Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).
curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/bls_work_stoppages/bls_work_stoppages_monthly" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'import requests
ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/bls_work_stoppages/bls_work_stoppages_monthly").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")
# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
print(row)API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/bls_work_stoppages/bls_work_stoppages_monthly
Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.
Where this data comes from and what was made from it. Other people's work shows as counts; only shared projects are named.
Cite this snapshot
Pinned to snapshot 20260928T015350Z-99fd0b694687 and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026). US work stoppages: monthly strike & lockout panel [Data set, snapshot 20260928T015350Z-99fd0b694687, sha256 99fd0b694687]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-09-28, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/bls_work_stoppages/bls_work_stoppages_monthly?snapshot=20260928T015350Z-99fd0b694687
@misc{dz_bls_work_stoppages_bls_work_stoppages_mo_99fd0b69,
title = {{US work stoppages: monthly strike \& lockout panel}},
author = {{U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics}},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Datazimuts},
howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/bls_work_stoppages/bls_work_stoppages_monthly?snapshot=20260928T015350Z-99fd0b694687}},
note = {Snapshot 20260928T015350Z-99fd0b694687, sha256 99fd0b69468763ba43a667097bf2878993ac024b31d66391ca3dbe52144c4e84; accessed 2026-09-28}
}Embed a table or a chart
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