Econ Data Lens

Econ Data Lens is an open-source project with the goal of making public economic data more accessible, understandable, and useful.

The platform will eventually provide a web interface where users can browse and visualize datasets such as:

• Consumer Price Index (CPI)
• Average Price Index
• Employment and labor market data
• Additional Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and other public datasets

The data will be transformed into a clean, digestible format to help researchers, educators, journalists, and the public gain insight into the economy.

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Project Status

✅ The ETL pipeline for CPI data is complete.
🚧 Additional ETL pipelines (e.g., Average Price Index, employment datasets) are planned.
🌐 Web front-end for browsing and visualization is in the planning stage.

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For Developers

Requirements

• .NET 9 SDK
• PostgreSQL (local or containerized)
• (Optional) Docker for containerized workflows

Setup

Clone the repo and restore dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/jtsimon93/econ-data-lens.git
cd econ-data-lens
dotnet restore

Apply EF Core migrations and update the database:

dotnet ef database update

Run the ETL (CPI ingestion):

dotnet run --project src/EconDataLens.Etl

Configuration

Settings (connection strings, download paths, etc.) are managed via appsettings.json:

See src/EconDataLens.Etl/appsettings.example.json for a starter file.

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md file for guidelines.

General process:

1. Open an issue to propose significant changes or new features.
2. Fork the repository and create a feature branch.
3. Submit a pull request with a clear description of your changes.

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License

Copyright (c) 2025 Justin Simon

This project is licensed under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0).
See the LICENSE file for details.