---
title: Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP)
description: Nonfarm payrolls explained: what NFP measures, why the jobs report is the biggest print in macro, how internals trump the headline, worked example.
source: Helious
canonical: https://helious.io/learn/nonfarm-payrolls-explained
---

# Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP)

**Nonfarm payrolls (NFP)** is the headline number of the monthly US Employment Situation report: the net change in jobs across the economy excluding farm workers, private households, and a few small categories. Released at 8:30 a.m. ET, usually on the first Friday of the month, it is the single most-traded data print in global markets.

It dominates because employment sits on both sides of the Fed’s mandate: a hot number argues against cuts, a weak one demands them, and because the report is dense: alongside the payroll count come the unemployment rate (from a separate household survey), average hourly earnings, and revisions to the prior two months. Desks trade the composite, not just the headline.

- The headline carries a ~±100k confidence interval, so revisions frequently rewrite the story.
- A “strong headline, weak internals” print (big NFP, rising unemployment, soft wages) often reverses the first move within the hour.

**Worked example:** Consensus is +160k. The print lands at +85k, unemployment ticks from 4.1% to 4.3%, and the prior month is revised down 40k. The 2-year yield collapses 16bp inside two minutes, 2s10s bull-steepens 8bp, and fed funds futures move from pricing one cut this year to nearly three. That is roughly a −1.5 z-score surprise, a genuine outlier.

## Questions

### What are nonfarm payrolls?

The monthly count of US jobs added or lost outside farming, published on the first Friday of most months at 8:30 a.m. ET. It is the single most-watched read on the labour market and it moves rates, equities and the dollar within seconds.

### How much does a payrolls miss move the market?

It depends on the size of the surprise against consensus, which is why Helious scores every print in standard deviations rather than in jobs. The revisions to the previous two months often matter as much as the headline. Every print, its forecast and its sigma surprise are on [the payrolls series page](https://helious.io/data/nonfarm-payrolls).

### When is the next jobs report?

Helious publishes the exact date and time of the next release, with the consensus forecast as it firms up, on [the payrolls series page](https://helious.io/data/nonfarm-payrolls) and [the economic calendar](https://helious.io/calendar).

## Live data

Helious measures this and publishes the current figures at [https://helious.io/learn/nonfarm-payrolls-explained](https://helious.io/learn/nonfarm-payrolls-explained), and through the get_auctions and get_rates_and_curve tools on its MCP server at https://helious.io/mcp.