Definition
Nonfarm payrolls are the total number of paid jobs in the US economy outside agriculture, as counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The monthly change in that total – “the economy added 150,000 jobs” – is the headline number of the Employment Situation report, usually released on the first Friday of the month and one of the most market-moving data releases in the world.
How it works
The number comes from the establishment survey (Current Employment Statistics): roughly 120,000 businesses and government agencies report how many people were on their payrolls in the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. It counts jobs, not people, so someone with two part-time jobs counts twice. It excludes farm workers, the self-employed, private household employees and unpaid family workers.
Each month’s figure is revised in each of the next two reports as more surveys come in, and once a year all figures are benchmarked to near-complete counts from unemployment-insurance tax records.
Example
Suppose payrolls were 159,300,000 in August and 159,450,000 in September: the report says +150,000 jobs. If a month later the August level is revised down by 40,000 while September stands, the September gain becomes +190,000. Watching the three-month average, rather than a single month, smooths out much of this noise.
Nonfarm payrolls in history
Readings at turning points, taken from the same data as the chart above.
| Date | Jobs added | Jobless rate | What was happening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 1945 | −1,959K | – | Demobilization at the end of World War II. |
| Dec 1974 | −613K | 7.2% | Recession after the first oil shock. |
| Sep 1983 | +1,118K | 9.2% | Largest gain of the 1980s, boosted by telephone workers returning from a strike. |
| Mar 2009 | −824K | 8.7% | Worst month of the Great Recession. |
| May 2010 | +522K | 9.6% | Temporary hiring for the 2010 Census inflates the number. |
| Apr 2020 | −20,469K | 14.8% | Pandemic lockdowns: by far the largest one-month loss on record. |
| Jun 2020 | +4,631K | 11.0% | Reopening: the largest one-month gain on record. |
| Sep 2026 | +29K | 4.2% | Latest reading. |
Monthly values. Explore every month on the US Job Growth chart.
Common mistakes
- “Payrolls and the unemployment rate always agree.” They come from two different surveys. The unemployment rate comes from a survey of households and can move in the opposite direction in any given month.
- Over-reading one month The 90% confidence interval on a monthly change is roughly ±130,000 jobs, so a small gain or loss may not be different from zero.
Put this chart on your website
Set the options, check the preview, then copy the code into any HTML page, blog post or sidebar. There is nothing to install and no account to create; the chart refreshes itself when new data is published.
Preview
Free for personal and commercial sites. The only condition: leave the two credit links in the code visible. Every setting is explained on the Embed page, where you can also pick any of our charts.
Nonfarm payrolls: questions and answers
How many jobs does the economy need to add each month?
Enough to absorb growth in the working-age population that wants to work. That “breakeven” pace depends on population growth and immigration, and estimates have varied widely in recent years.
Why is it called ‘nonfarm’?
Farm employment is seasonal and hard to survey through payroll records, so it is measured separately.