{"id":431559,"date":"2026-06-05T19:40:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/06\/us-may-non-farm-payrolls-172k-vs-85k-expected\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T19:40:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:40:06","slug":"us-may-non-farm-payrolls-172k-vs-85k-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/06\/us-may-non-farm-payrolls-172k-vs-85k-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"US May non-farm payrolls +172K vs +85K expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/investinglive.com\/news\/us-april-non-farm-payrolls-115k-vs-62k-expected-20260508\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"follow\">Prior <\/a>was +115K (revised to +179K)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Two-month net revision +93K<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">March was +185K (revised to +214K) <\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Unemployment rate 4.3% vs 4.3% expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Prior unemployment rate 4.3%<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Unrounded unemployment 4.296% vs 4.337% prior<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Participation rate 61.8% vs 61.8% prior<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">U6 underemployment rate 8.1% vs 8.2% prior<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Average hourly earnings +0.3% m\/m vs +0.3% expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Average hourly earnings +3.4% y\/y vs +3.4% expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Average weekly hours 34.3vs 34.3 expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Change in private payrolls +120K vs +85K expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Change in manufacturing payrolls +7K vs +2K expected<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Government payrolls +52K vs -8K in April<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The US labor market entered May firmly in low-hire, low-fire mode. Hiring had cooled to a trickle \u2014 the trailing 12-month pace down around +21K \u2014 but employers weren&#8217;t cutting either, leaving the unemployment rate pinned at 4.3% for months. April set the tone, with +115K nearly doubling the ~62K consensus, led by health care, transportation and warehousing, and retail. March was revised up to +185K while February was marked down to -156K.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The leading data into May was mixed but not alarming. ADP&#8217;s private-sector tally came in at +122K with eight of ten sectors adding jobs, the most broad-based hiring in years on their read. Jobless claims drifted higher, with initial claims back up to 225K, the highest since early February, but still consistent with a backdrop of soft hiring rather than rising layoffs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The stakes sit with the Fed. The funds rate has been held at 3.50-3.75% since last year, with markets pricing roughly 97% odds of another hold at the June 16-17 meeting and inflation still stuck near 3.8%. That leaves the bar high for the labor data to shift the path: it would take a clear stumble \u2014 a soft headline or heavy back-month revisions \u2014 to revive rate-cut bets.<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prior was +115K (revised to +179K) Two-month net revision +93K March was +185K (revised to +214K) Unemployment rate 4.3% vs 4.3% expected Prior unemployment rate 4.3% Unrounded unemployment 4.296% vs 4.337% prior Participation rate 61.8% vs 61.8% prior U6 underemployment rate 8.1% vs 8.2% prior Average hourly earnings +0.3% m\/m vs +0.3% expected Average hourly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}