Human Resource & Employment Services Data: Staffing Counts, Turnover History, Wage Benchmarks, Vacancy Feeds and Skills Taxonomies · Head-to-head
USAJOBS API vs USAJOBS (federal job board)
Which human resource & employment services data: staffing counts, turnover history, wage benchmarks, vacancy feeds and skills taxonomies data fits your job: USAJOBS API, or USAJOBS (federal job board). API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
USAJOBS API
USAJOBS (federal job board)
Where the fields line up
6 shared fields — join on these.
| Field | USAJOBS API | USAJOBS (federal job board) |
|---|---|---|
PositionTitle | documented | Job title of the advertised federal position. |
PositionLocationDisplay | documented | Duty-station description shown to seekers. |
DepartmentName | documented | Hiring cabinet-level department. |
OrganizationName | documented | Hiring agency or sub-element within the department. |
QualificationSummary | documented | Summary of required qualifications for the role. |
ApplicationCloseDate | documented | Closing date for applications on the announcement. |
Coverage, side by side
| USAJOBS API | USAJOBS (federal job board) | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | Worldwide duty stations - domestic, overseas and remote - resolved to country, subdivision and latitude-longitude | Worldwide duty stations - domestic, overseas and remote-designated - as seeker-facing location strings |
| Temporal | Currently open announcements plus a multi-year historical archive; one filtered historical query documented at about 20,600 records | The live board plus a historical layer of closed announcements behind it; hundreds of thousands of postings accumulate per year |
What each contains
They tie on 1 attribute. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| USAJOBS API | USAJOBS (federal job board) | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | U.S. Office of Personnel Management | U.S. Office of Personnel Management |
| Subject lens | The federal vacancy database in its deepest documented form: open announcements, a historical archive and full announcement text, plus forty-plus reference vocabularies | The official federal employment site as data: every open announcement with controlled-vocabulary metadata, plus a historical layer of closed postings |
| Cataloged fields | 39 documented fields, all verified | 13 documented fields, all verified |
| Geographic coverage | Worldwide duty stations - domestic, overseas and remote - resolved to country, subdivision and latitude-longitude | Worldwide duty stations - domestic, overseas and remote-designated - as seeker-facing location strings |
| Temporal coverage | Currently open announcements plus a multi-year historical archive; one filtered historical query documented at about 20,600 records | The live board plus a historical layer of closed announcements behind it; hundreds of thousands of postings accumulate per year |
| Scale | Tens of thousands of open announcements at any moment, with the archive behind them and forty-plus code lists | Roughly 20,000 open announcements at any given moment |
| Distinctive structure | UserArea narrative block (duties, education, requirements, evaluations, benefits) and promotion potential on historical rows | First-class eligibility columns: SecurityClearanceRequired, PositionScheduleTypeCode, HiringPath, WhoMayApply |
| Best for | Posting-level panels, salary-by-series benchmarks, text-plus-code modeling, coordinate mapping | Census reads screened by clearance, schedule or hiring path; presentation-faithful demand tracking |
Where they're equivalent
More than the architecture suggests. One publisher, one universe, one grain: every row on either shelf is a single vacancy announcement, never an aggregate, and both run worldwide - domestic, overseas and remote-designated duty stations alike. Both dictionaries were verified against observed structure during the August 2026 research pass, a standard met by 85.7 percent of the 1,744 cataloged datasets, and both share the join key that matters: the announcement control number, which ties live postings to historical ones so a reposted role updates one row instead of spawning a duplicate.
Both also stop at the same line, and it pays to know where. A row is an advertisement, not a hire: salary figures are advertised ranges with rate intervals rather than settled wages, and neither shelf carries applicant-flow or outcome columns. For what happened after the announcement closed, pair either record with a hires-and-separations series such as BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS).
Fair questions
Do the two field dictionaries overlap?
On the skeleton, almost entirely. Title, department, agency, occupational series, grade band, advertised salary range with rate interval, work schedule, candidate eligibility, application deadline and qualification summary appear on both shelves. The deep record adds coordinates, lifecycle dates and a narrative block; the board record adds clearance level and hiring path as per-row columns.
Which USAJOBS record reaches further back into closed announcements?
Its historical archive keeps past postings queryable with control number, appointment type, open and close dates, promotion potential and duty stations - one filtered historical query is documented at about 20,600 records. The board record carries a historical layer too, but its confirmed dictionary is built around the live listing surface.
Can Datadory deliver both USAJOBS records together?
Yes - sample both, pick by fit, or take both in one feed. Deliveries resolve the two arrival shapes into one schema keyed on the announcement control number, with sample rows attached for validation, on one schedule - daily, weekly, or hourly, your call - beside the rest of the human resource & employment services catalog.