Risk and sentiment
US Nonfarm Payrolls YoY
Year-over-year nonfarm payroll growth, a labor-cycle momentum signal.
At a glance
US Nonfarm Payrolls YoY: latest value and prior change
As of 2026-04-01, US Nonfarm Payrolls YoY is 0.16 %. It is 0.00 pp higher than 0.15 % on 2026-03-01.
Across 124 available observations from 2016-01-01 to 2026-04-01, the latest value is at the tie-adjusted 12th percentile.
- Observed on
- Default comparison window
- 2016-01-01–2026-04-01
- Observations · observed cadence
- 124 · Monthly
- Data source
- FRED
A high or low percentile does not by itself make the indicator positive, negative, or a buy or sell signal.
Time-series chart
US Nonfarm Payrolls YoY
2016-01-01–2026-04-01
Long-history series are stored as real provider observations. Index, FX, VIX, and ratio charts use historical backfill where providers expose it; Korean investor flow and margin-credit feeds expand as stable historical endpoints become available.
Interpretation guide
Nonfarm payrolls YoY: reading the slope of the jobs cycle
US nonfarm payrolls YoY compares total nonfarm employment, published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the same month a year earlier. Unlike the headline monthly job-gain number, the year-over-year rate filters single-month noise and makes it clear whether the employment cycle is accelerating or losing speed.
The establishment-survey root and the revision problem
Payrolls come from the establishment survey, which tallies payroll records from roughly 120,000 businesses. The large sample makes it steadier than the household survey behind the unemployment rate, but initial prints are revised twice monthly and again at annual benchmarks, and the revisions can be large.
- The direction of revisions to the prior two months often says more about the cycle than the fresh headline.
- Several consecutive downward revisions suggest the statistics are catching a slowdown with a delay.
- The birth-death model for new firms has a documented tendency to overstate jobs around turning points.
What the YoY rate maps to
Total employment rises almost all the time, so the level is uninformative; the trajectory of the growth rate is the signal. Which band the YoY rate sits in, and which way it is moving, separates late expansion from recession onset.
- Growth around 2 percent YoY marks a firm expansion running ahead of population growth.
- A slide below 1 percent that keeps deepening is the classic deceleration pattern of a late cycle.
- Past recessions generally began before YoY growth crossed below zero, so treat the approach to zero as the alarm line.
Release-day volatility and practical use
Jobs-report day is among the most volatile sessions for global rates and FX, and the shock passes straight into the won and KOSPI futures overnight. For Korean investors, whether the YoY trend has changed matters longer than whether the headline beat or missed.
- When payrolls and the US Unemployment Rate from the same report disagree, defer judgment until revisions arrive.
- YoY deceleration confirmed by falling US Job Openings strengthens the case that labor demand is fading.
- On payroll surprises that spike the US Treasury 2Y yield, check the pressure feeding into USD/KRW as well.