Seco Labor MCP

🇨🇭 Part of the [Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio](https://github.com/malkreide)

SECO Labor Market MCP Server

🌐 English | [Deutsch](README.de.md)

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for Swiss labor market data from SECO (Staatssekretariat für Wirtschaft) and AMSTAT via opendata.swiss.

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Overview

This server connects AI models to Swiss labor market statistics — unemployment rates, job seekers, open positions, youth unemployment, and occupational breakdowns — all without requiring an API key.

Primary audiences:

• 🏫 Schulamt / Education planning — youth unemployment, vocational guidance data
• 📊 Research & analysis — labor market trends, cantonal comparisons
• 🤖 AI agents — automated labor market monitoring and reporting

Anchor query: *"Welche Berufsgruppen haben im Kanton Zürich die höchste Jugendarbeitslosigkeit, und welche Lehrberufe unterliegen der Stellenmeldepflicht?"* → More use cases by audience →

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Data Sources (Phase 1 — No Auth Required)

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Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐

│ seco-labor-mcp │ │ │ │ ┌─────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ FastMCP │ │ 9 MCP Tools │ │ │ │ Server │◄──►│ seco_search_datasets │ │ │ │ (stdio / │ │ seco_get_dataset │ │ │ │ HTTP) │ │ seco_get_unemployment_* │ │ │ └─────────────┘ │ seco_get_youth_* │ │ │ │ │ seco_get_job_seekers │ │ │ ▼ │ seco_get_open_positions │ │ │ ┌─────────────┐ │ seco_get_monthly_url │ │ │ │ httpx │ │ seco_list_cantons │ │ │ │ async │ └──────────────────────────┘ │ │ └──────┬──────┘ │ └─────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌───────────────────────────────────┐ │ opendata.swiss CKAN API │ │ https://opendata.swiss/api/3/ │ │ action/package_search │ │ action/package_show │ └───────────┬───────────────────────┘ │ ▼ ┌───────────────────────────────────┐ │ SECO Data Resources │ │ CSV / XLSX / PDF Downloads │ │ (monthly labor market data) │ └───────────────────────────────────┘

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Where the figures come from — and what is missing

SECO is no longer a publisher on opendata.swiss. Verified 2026-08-14: organization_show returns 404, and none of the 176 entries in organization_list is SECO. Until then the server filtered every search on that organisation and therefore returned nothing — a name lookup that misses looks exactly like an empty search.

The registered unemployed and job seekers are still SECO's figures: the BFS publishes them in table T3.3.0.1 and names SECO in the footer. The server reads that table through a pinned dataset id (sources.py), checked against the live source by a live test.

*thousands, annual average*

The three series do not measure the same thing: in 2000 the ILO figure is 1.76× the registered one. The server reports them separately and labelled, and never converts one into the other.

The cantonal layer: four cantons, four schemas

There is no national monthly series — but four cantons publish their own RAV figures, each in its own portal with its own column names. For those, seco_get_unemployment_overview(canton=…) returns real values:

The other 22 cantons get a named refusal — no figure from another canton and no national aggregate. Partial coverage that feels complete is worse than none.

The four series are not comparable with each other and do not add up to a Swiss figure: different time axes, different geographic levels, and in ZG's case a rate rather than a count.

Still not available: unemployment by occupational group, open positions as a national series, and youth unemployment for Switzerland or for 24 of the 26 cantons. The affected tools say so and return no substitute figure. These values exist interactively on amstat.ch, which offers no interface a server could call.

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Tools

12 of a maximum of 15 tools.

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Unfallstatistik UVG (SSUV)

The three seco_get_uvg_* tools cover the risk side of the same labour market the unemployment tools describe: how many occupational accidents and diseases occur per branch, and how that develops over ten years.

The publisher is not SECO. The Unfallstatistik UVG is issued by the Koordinationsgruppe KSUV and the Sammelstelle SSUV c/o Suva, Lucerne. The seco_ prefix addresses this server, not the source; every response names the actual publisher in its source field.

Architecture decision: C (dump-first)

Verified live on 2026-08-05, full write-up in PROBE_REPORT_UVG.md.

The source has no API. A link scan across every data page returned 165 PDFs and zero files with .csv, .xlsx or .json. opendata.swiss does not list the source at all (count=0 for six of seven search terms), and the BFS dam-api silently ignores its filter parameters. What remains is machine-readable in practice but not by design:

PDFs are cached for 24 h and fetched with 2s/4s/8s backoff.

What every response tells you

• source_freshness.data_year — the data year, not the edition year. The 2026 edition reports 2024; that two-year lag is stated, not buried.
• totals_check — parsed rows are summed and compared against the total printed in the same publication. A broken layout shows up here instead of becoming a plausible wrong number.
• significant — the source marks statistically significant year-on-year changes with an asterisk. That flag is preserved per data point, so a change is only reported as significant where the source says so.

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Installation

Claude Desktop (stdio)

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{

"mcpServers": { "seco-labor": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["seco-labor-mcp"] } } }

Cloud / HTTP

pip install seco-labor-mcp

MCP_TRANSPORT=http PORT=8000 seco-labor-mcp

http is the transport to use. It is the only one that can carry the modern protocol era: measured against this server object, http negotiates `2026-07-28` while sse caps every client at `2025-11-25`, even a client that offers the modern era. sse and streamable-http remain accepted for existing deployments — tests/test_transport_aera.py runs both and records which era each one actually yields.

The HTTP server binds to `127.0.0.1` (loopback) by default to prevent NeighborJack on shared networks. For container deployments where you actually need to accept traffic from outside the container, set HOST=0.0.0.0 explicitly — ideally in your Dockerfile / orchestrator config, and only behind an upstream proxy or firewall:

HOST=0.0.0.0 MCP_TRANSPORT=http PORT=8000 seco-labor-mcp   # container only

An unknown MCP_TRANSPORT value now exits with an error. It used to fall back to stdio silently, so a typo produced a server that simply never appeared on the expected port.

Development

git clone https://github.com/malkreide/seco-labor-mcp.git

cd seco-labor-mcp pip install -e ".[dev]" pytest tests/ -m "not live" -v

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Usage Examples

Search for youth unemployment data

Tool: seco_search_datasets

Input: { "query": "Jugendarbeitslosigkeit Alter", "limit": 5 }

Get cantonal unemployment for Zürich

Tool: seco_get_unemployment_overview

Input: { "canton": "ZH", "response_format": "markdown" }

Get monthly report URL

Tool: seco_get_monthly_report_url

Input: { "year": 2026, "month": 2, "language": "de" }

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Key Concepts

Arbeitslose vs. Stellensuchende

Eselsbrücke: Arbeitslose ⊂ Stellensuchende — Arbeitslose sind eine Teilmenge.