Non farm payrolls
Family IX · Macro
Not to be confused with economic calendar, consumer price index.
Non farm payrolls is the headline employment component of the US Employment Situation report, released monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It measures the net change in the number of paid employees across most industries, excluding farm work, private household staff, and some non-profit employees. The figure is derived from a survey of employers rather than households, and is published alongside the unemployment rate, which comes from a separate survey.
What the figure covers
The payroll count is built from the Current Employment Statistics survey, which samples employers and counts jobs rather than people. A person holding two jobs is counted twice, and unpaid workers such as family members on a farm are excluded.
- Included: most private-sector industries, government employees at federal, state and local level.
- Excluded: farm workers, private household employees, and employees of certain non-profit organisations.
The headline number is the monthly change in total payrolls, usually expressed in thousands. It is revised twice after the initial release as more survey responses arrive.
Worked example
The headline figure is the difference between the two levels. A positive number indicates net job creation; a negative number indicates net job losses.
How the release is read
Traders compare the published change with a consensus forecast, and often look at components such as average hourly earnings and the unemployment rate, which is published in the same report but drawn from the household survey. The initial release can move interest rate expectations, bond yields and the US dollar, particularly when the actual figure differs materially from the forecast.
Because the data is revised, the first print is not final. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes revisions in the following two monthly reports.
Often confused with
- economic calendar
- An economic calendar is a schedule of upcoming macroeconomic data releases, central bank decisions and official events, each listed with its scheduled publication time and the country or region it concerns.
- consumer price index
- The Consumer Price Index is a statistical measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban households for a fixed basket of goods and services, used to gauge inflation.