Payrolls lands at 08:30 ET on the first Friday of the month. Three numbers arrive at once — and they regularly tell different stories.
Net jobs added or lost across the economy excluding farm work, private households and non-profits. It arrives alongside the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings, drawn from two separate surveys — one of businesses, one of households.
The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate: employment and prices. Payrolls is the clearest monthly read on labour market slack.
A strong number says the economy can absorb higher rates, which lifts rate expectations and the dollar and pressures gold. A weak one pulls forward expectations of cuts.
Reading the headline in isolation.
Revisions to the prior two months are published alongside, and they routinely reverse the meaning. A headline beating by 90,000 while the prior two months are revised down by 110,000 means net employment was worse, not better.
The market does not always price that immediately, which is one source of the reversals seen in the hour after the release.
The three headline figures disagree more often than most people expect, because they come from different surveys. Which one the market decides to trade is not knowable in advance.
Average hourly earnings is the inflation-relevant component — strong wage growth feeds the price picture and therefore the rate path.