Hunch. Employers have added 68,000 jobs a month on average so far this year, but economists expect little change from September's weak 29,000.
The jobs market resolves on the first figure in the same report: YES if the US added more than 50,000 jobs outside farming in October, and NO at 50,000 or fewer, with later revisions not counting. If the report is not out by 5 February 2027, September's 29,000 decides, which means NO, and The Guardian and AP reports settle it if the official page cannot be opened.
We looked for cases where a US monthly jobs report came right after a weak month, when hiring was between zero and 0.05% of all jobs (about 80,000 today) and unemployment rose by 0.1 points. Figures for the two months before had also been cut. We found six such reports from 2000 to 2025, out of 624 monthly reports since 1965. In five of them, unemployment did not fall. (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)