Nonfarm Payroll

Nonfarm Payroll (often abbreviated NFP) is a monthly count of how many paid jobs exist in the United States, outside of farming and a few other excluded categories. It is one of the most widely watched economic statistics in the world, because it is one of the timeliest, broadest snapshots of whether the U.S. economy is adding or shedding jobs.

The number comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which surveys a large sample of businesses and government agencies each month about the size of their payrolls. That survey is rolled up into a single headline figure showing the change in jobs from the prior month, and it's released as part of a larger report called the "Employment Situation," which also includes the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings.

The "nonfarm" part excludes farm workers because agricultural employment swings heavily with the seasons and would add noise rather than signal. It also excludes a smaller set of categories such as general government employees, private household staff, and workers at nonprofits, since these behave differently from the broader private-sector labor market the report is trying to capture.

The nuance that trips people up: the number reported each month is almost always followed by revisions in the following two months, as the BLS collects more complete survey responses. A weak initial number can be revised much stronger later, or vice versa, so traders watch not just the headline print but whether prior months get revised up or down, and how the number compares to what economists had forecast, not just whether it's positive or negative.