The Fact
BLS says an over-the-month change of roughly 122,000 nonfarm payroll jobs is needed to be statistically significant at the 90% confidence level in the payroll survey, while the comparable threshold for household-survey employment is roughly 650,000 to 676,000 people.
What This Means
Small monthly movements can fall inside sampling error, especially in the household survey. A precise-looking monthly number is still an estimate with uncertainty around it.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Comparing Employment from the Household and Payroll Surveys; CES Frequently Asked Questions. Accessed October 2, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm