ILO Labour Statistics (ILOSTAT): unemployment, wages, informality

Labour market data from the ILO (ILOSTAT) by country, year, sex and age, with provenance.

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What it can do

    What data it sees

    Do you need an account

    No: the server works without sign-in

    Labour market data from the ILO (ILOSTAT) by country, year, sex and age, with provenance.

    How to connect

    How to connect ILO Labour Statistics (ILOSTAT): unemployment, wages, informality to Claude

    The server address to paste into Claude settings:

    https://ilo.sidneybissoli.com/mcp

    1. Open Claude (claude.ai or the desktop app).
    2. Go to Settings → Connectors.
    3. Click Add custom connector.
    4. Paste the server address copied below into Remote MCP server URL and click Add.
    5. In a chat, click + → Connectors and switch the new connector on.

    Custom connectors are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans (Free is limited to one). On Team and Enterprise an organization Owner adds the connector first under Organization settings → Connectors.

    Authorization

    After you click Add, a sign-in window for the service opens. Sign in with your own account and approve access. Claude never sees your password.

    How to connect ILO Labour Statistics (ILOSTAT): unemployment, wages, informality to ChatGPT

    The server address to paste into ChatGPT settings:

    https://ilo.sidneybissoli.com/mcp

    1. Open ChatGPT in a browser (chatgpt.com). A Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu plan is required.
    2. Turn on developer mode once: Settings → Apps → Advanced settings → Developer mode.
    3. Open Settings → Connectors and click Create.
    4. Fill in the form: Name (anything), Description (one line about what the service does), MCP server URL (copy it below).
    5. Under Authentication choose OAuth if the service requires sign-in, otherwise None. Click Create.
    6. In a new chat open + → Apps/Connectors and enable the connector.

    OpenAI has renamed this section before (Connectors → Apps/Plugins). If the label differs, search settings for "developer mode". On Business/Enterprise workspaces an admin must allow custom connectors first.

    Authorization

    On first use ChatGPT opens the service's sign-in window. Sign in and approve access.

    How to connect ILO Labour Statistics (ILOSTAT): unemployment, wages, informality to Cursor

    The server address to paste into Cursor settings:

    https://ilo.sidneybissoli.com/mcp

    Fastest: click Open in Cursor below and confirm the prompt.

    Manually:

    1. In Cursor open Settings → Cursor Settings → MCP and click Add new global MCP server.
    2. Paste the JSON copied below into ~/.cursor/mcp.json (per project: .cursor/mcp.json in the repo root).
    3. Save the file. The server appears in the MCP list; authorize it there if asked.

    Authorization

    If the service needs sign-in, an authorize button appears next to the server in the MCP list.

    Server tool list (6)

    Raw names from tools/list. Only developers need these.

    ilo_search_indicatorsSearch the ILOSTAT catalogue of ~1,200 indicator dataflows by keywords in the name or id (e.g. "unemployment rate sex age"). All terms must match (AND, case-insensitive), so start with 2–3 English words and drop terms if you get 0 results. Everyday and US wording is resolved to the ILO's own (labor→labour, wages/salary→earnings, informality→informal, gender→sex, productivity→output per worker); when that happens the response says so in vocabulary_notes. Results are ranked by ILO relevance weight, not by match count. Reading the id tells you the shape: suffix _RT = rate/ratio, _NB = number (usually thousands); dataflows whose second token starts with 2 (e.g. DF_UNE_2EAP_…) are ILO modelled estimates with full country/year coverage, the others are reported national data. Returns dataflow ids to use with ilo_get_data / ilo_get_indicator_metadata. Searches the local catalogue only — it does not return statistical values (use ilo_get_data), does not search dimension codes such as countries (use ilo_list_dimension_values) and does not cover non-ILO sources.
    ilo_get_indicator_metadataStructure of one ILOSTAT dataflow: dimensions (in SDMX key order), their codelists, the time dimension, the source's default selection and the data vintage (last update at the ILO). Use before ilo_get_data to know which filters exist. Does not return statistical values and does not list the codes themselves (use ilo_list_dimension_values).
    ilo_list_dimension_valuesValid codes (id + label) of one dimension of an ILOSTAT dataflow — e.g. the country/area codes of REF_AREA (ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 such as BRA, plus X-codes for aggregates such as X01 World) or the categories of SEX (SEX_T/SEX_M/SEX_F) and AGE. Use `search` to resolve a name to a code (e.g. search "Brazil") instead of paging through hundreds of codes; codelists are shared across dataflows, so a code found here is valid wherever the same codelist is used. Use to build correct ilo_get_data filters. Does not return statistical values, does not say which codes actually have data for a given dataflow, and is not applicable to the time dimension (filter it via start_period/end_period in ilo_get_data).
    ilo_get_dataStatistical observations from one ILOSTAT dataflow, filtered by dimension codes (filters, e.g. {"REF_AREA": ["BRA","ARG"], "SEX": "SEX_T"}) and period (start_period/end_period, e.g. "2015"/"2024"). REF_AREA is required, maximum 30 areas per call — for broad panels, split areas into batches and/or paginate by period. Unfiltered dimensions return all their categories. Does not aggregate, convert or otherwise transform values (raw ILOSTAT data only), and does not search indicators (use ilo_search_indicators).
    searchSearches the ILOSTAT labour statistics (≈1,200 SDMX dataflows: employment, unemployment, wages, working time, informality, SDG labour indicators) catalog and returns up to 10 matching documents as { id, title, url }, ordered by relevance (an empty list means nothing matched). This tool exists for the OpenAI Deep Research contract: ChatGPT deep research, company knowledge and research workflows over the Responses API require exactly the tools `search` and `fetch`. Pass one of the returned ids to `fetch` to read the document. For direct questions and for data (values, series, rankings) prefer the `ilo_*` tools, which return the actual data with provenance — this is a catalog index, not a data query. Query: natural language or keywords, Portuguese or English; accents and case are ignored. Behavior: read-only and idempotent — the catalog comes from the public source and is cached in memory.
    fetchReturns the full document for an id obtained from `search`, as { id, title, text, url, metadata }: `text` is the readable content (Markdown) and `url` the canonical public page to cite. Companion of `search` in the OpenAI Deep Research contract, over the ILOSTAT labour statistics (≈1,200 SDMX dataflows: employment, unemployment, wages, working time, informality, SDG labour indicators) catalog. Only ids returned by `search` are valid; an unknown id returns an error. The `ilo_*` tools remain the tools for data queries. Behavior: read-only and idempotent — a live GET against the public source when the document needs it.