US Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) · Trading Hub Terminal

What it is

Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) measures the net change in the number of employed people in the United States over the prior month, excluding farm workers, household employees, and non-profit employees. It comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey and lands at 08:30 ET on the first Friday of every month.

The release carries four numbers traders watch simultaneously:

Nonfarm payrolls change — the headline jobs-added number.
Unemployment rate — from the separate household survey.
Average hourly earnings MoM and YoY — the inflation read.
Labor force participation rate — context for the unemployment number.

Why traders care

NFP shapes the Fed reaction function more directly than any other single print. The Fed’s dual mandate is maximum employment and price stability, and NFP is half of that mandate arriving monthly. The print flows through to:

Dollar strength via short-end yield moves and Fed rate path repricing.
Bond yields — the 2-year treasury can move 10+ basis points in the first minute on a large surprise.
Gold, which trades inversely to real yields.
Equities, with the “good news is good news” or “good news is bad news” regime flipping depending on where we are in the cycle.
Crypto, which follows risk-on / risk-off plumbing.

Intraday NFP reactions can be the largest single-print move of any month — often larger than CPI because the number has both an employment and an earnings (inflation) component.

How to read it

Three numbers drive the first-minute reaction, in order:

Headline NFP vs consensus. A miss or beat of 50K+ is a big surprise. The initial tape direction usually tracks this.
Average hourly earnings YoY vs consensus. This is the inflation read. A hot earnings print with a hot jobs print is the most hawkish combination; that’s when the 2-year yield screams higher.
Unemployment rate vs consensus. Moves in 0.1% increments, so any change is material.

Rule-of-thumb reactions

Outcome	USD	Gold	SPX	US10Y yield
Hot jobs + hot wages	↑↑	↓	↓	↑↑
Hot jobs, cool wages	↑	→	→ / ↑	↑
Cool jobs, hot wages	Mixed	→	↓	Mixed
Cool jobs + cool wages	↓↓	↑	↑	↓↓

Watch for revisions to the two prior months. A small surprise on the headline can be fully explained by a large revision, and the tape usually catches up within the first five minutes.

What we do in the terminal

On NFP Friday, Trading Hub Terminal:

Pins the event at the top of the Impact Feed from 24 hours before release.
Shows forecast, previous print, whisper number, and revision history for the last six months.
Flags all affected symbols in your watchlist with a pre-event caution badge starting 30 minutes before release.
Surfaces the reaction within 60 seconds of release, joined with the revision breakdown so you’re not scanning three sources to see if the beat was real.

Common pitfalls

Revisions matter as much as the print. A +100K beat that comes with -120K of prior-month revisions is net bearish. The tape figures this out within minutes; don’t fade the move based on headline alone.
Don’t confuse NFP with ADP. ADP Employment Change releases two days before NFP and is based on private payroll processor data. It’s a weak predictor — correlation to NFP is lower than most traders assume. Trade the actual print, not ADP’s lead.
Earnings can invert the move. A huge beat on jobs with a big miss on wages can sell the dollar if the market reads it as disinflationary labor supply. Context rules.
Seasonal adjustments distort summer and January prints. The seasonal adjustment factor is largest in January and August. Extreme prints in those months often normalise in the revisions.