WHISPER +40k

GS (Hatzius): We estimate nonfarm payrolls increased 45k in January. On the negative side, we estimate that the birth-death model—which will be updated with this report, more details below—could contribute 30-50k fewer jobs to payroll growth (on a seasonally adjusted basis) than in recent months and big data indicators indicated a modest pace of private sector job growth. Additionally, we expect unchanged government payrolls—reflecting a 10k decline in federal government payrolls that is offset by a 10k increase in state and local government payrolls. On the positive side, the pace of layoffs—a particularly important determinant of net job growth in January—remained subdued. However, the seasonal factors have evolved to expect smaller declines in employment in recent Januarys, limiting the potential boost from this channel. At the industry level, we expect rebounds in retail trade employment—which saw less holiday hiring than usual that should correspond to fewer January layoffs—and construction employment—for which unusually poor weather likely contributed to a decline in December. We do not expect a drag from Winter Storm Fern, which formed about a week after the reference week.

– We estimate that the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.4% in January, though see risks as skewed to a decline: the bar for rounding down to 4.3% is not high from an unrounded 4.38% in December and the January unemployment rate appears to suffer from modestly negative residual seasonality (the unrounded unemployment rate has declined in each of the last three Januarys).

– We estimate average hourly earnings rose 0.35% month-over-month in January, reflecting positive calendar effects.

JPM (Feroli): We forecast a 75k increase in nonfarm payrolls in January and a stable 4.4% unemployment rate. Note this release will include the establishment survey benchmark revision. It would normally have also included updated population controls for the household survey, but those are being delayed until the February release because of the October/November government shutdown.

– The workweek continues to oscillate between 34.2 and 34.3 hours. We look for hours to rebound to 34.3 in January, and the warm weather noted above could help with this, though remaining stable at 34.2 is also certainly possible.

– Average hourly earnings growth firmed over 2H25, with the %3m/3m rate back up to 4.0% from a low of 3.3% in June. In contrast, the earnings figure for production and nonsupervisory workers dipped to 3.4%, re-touching it’s cycle lows. We find both measures useful for forecasting other earnings like ECI. We look for average hourly earnings to rise 0.3%m/m, bringing the over-year-ago rate down from 3.8% to 3.6%.

MS(Gapen): The labor market appears to have stabilized, and we forecast another solid month. Payrolls rise 55k. Private payrolls (+90k) are biased up temporarily, but federal resignations hold back gov’t payrolls. The UE rate is unchanged (4.4%). AHE +0.3% (-0.2pp to 3.6%y/y) and the workweek is unchanged.

BofA (Gabriel): Jan NFP is likely to rise by 45k (40k private). The reasons for our below consensus forecast are potential revisions to the birth death model and some residual seasonality. Keeping the model change aside, we think Jan job growth was pretty stable (likely 70-80k). We expect the u-rate to remain steady at 4.4%. The BLS will publish the annual benchmark revisions to the establishment survey and incorporate new population estimates in the HH survey.

Wrightson (Crandall): The risk in the outlook for January nonfarm payrolls has shifted to the low side of our estimate of 70K. The peripheral labor market indicators released in recent days have had a softer tone than anticipated. The warning signs started with the Conference Board’s weak job availability indexes for January and continued with ADP and Revelio headcount estimates, which showed an average gain in private payrolls across the two surveys of just 13K. We’re largely discounting the drop in job openings in the December JOLTS report because the series is volatile and the latest number is out of step with private-sector proxies, but it was still a surprise. We haven’t revised our formal forecast for the BLS payroll series, but the odds of a miss on the low side are now higher.

– We still think the unemployment rate is likely to hold steady at 4.4% in rounded terms this month. Here again, though, the risks are tilted toward a weaker (higher) outcome. We expect the number of unemployed workers to move up slightly, but not enough to change the rounding on the official number. (January’s unrounded level was 4.375%.) However, a 4.5% print is not out of the question.

– The impact of any softness in the January numbers would be reinforced by the expected downward adjustment to recent history in the annual establishment survey revisions. The preliminary benchmark revision report from BLS in September suggested that the published level of payrolls for March 2025 had been overstated by 911K, or 0.6%. The magnitude of the cumulative revision through the end of 2025 is somewhat uncertain, but it will clearly be steeply negative.

Wells Fargo (Porcelli): The January jobs report will likely leave the tepid picture of the labor market little changed. We estimate payroll growth picked up modestly to 80K and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.4%. That said, January’s pace of hiring is likely to be temporarily flattered by fewer layoffs of seasonal holiday workers than usual. We also see upside risks to the unemployment rate as other data signal the labor market continues to gradually loosen. While backward-looking, the annual benchmark revision to payrolls will show that job growth slowed more sharply last year than the currently reported data, underscoring the labor market’s weakening support to household income and consumer spending growth.

Deutsche Bank (Ryan): Our forecasts for headline (+75k forecast vs. +50k previously) and private (+75k vs. +37k) payrolls reflect a mild uptick in the pace of net job gains relative to their three-month and six-month averages. If our forecasts prove close to the mark, we expect the unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 4.4%. Regarding other details of the report, we anticipate average hourly earnings growth (0.3% vs. 0.3%) as well as hours worked (34.2hrs) to both remain steady. The upshot of our establishment survey forecasts would be a slight uptick in the year-over-year growth rate of our payroll proxy for nominal compensation (4.5% vs. 4.3%).

NatWest (Cummins): Nonfarm payrolls may have risen in January by 75,000 (with private payrolls advancing by 65,000). Our forecast is slightly stronger than the average monthly payroll gain registered in 2025 (49,000) but probably not too different than our estimated break-even pace of 50,000 jobs needed to keep the unemployment rate steady. In a close call, we think our projection could translate into a steady unemployment rate at 4.4% but have penciled in a small increase. In December, the U3 jobless rate rounded down to 4.4% (4.375%). It would take only slight increase in the underlying level of unemployment to produce a 4.5% print this month. Afterall, the Conference Board’s survey of consumers shows the proportion of people saying jobs are hard to get, less those saying they are plentiful, continued to rise in January. This differential is somewhat correlated with the unemployment rate, and points to it ticking up in January.

SocGen (Groen): We think nonfarm payrolls will have increased in January by around 80k, whereas the January unemployment rate likely stayed put at 4.4%. The January jobs report also provides us with the official benchmark revision of payrolls growth between April 2024 and March 2025, so in that respect this report gets some additional importance.

Nomura (Amemiya): We expect nonfarm payrolls growth accelerated to 85k in January. Lead indicators have improved broadly, and we expect some positive payback this month from negative weather effects and punitive seasonal adjustments in December.

– The unemployment rate likely ticked lower to 4.3%. We have not seen a convincing rebound in labor demand, but layoffs have slowed (from an already low level), which should push unemployment modestly lower.

– We expect average hourly earnings growth remained steady at 0.3% m-o-m, in line with the December reading and recent run-rate.

– The BLS will publish the final version of the 2025 NFP benchmark revisions along with the January report. We expect the final revision to be close to the preliminary estimate announced in September, reducing the pace of job gains by roughly 75k/month from April 2024-March 2025.

RBC (Reid): We forecast the January employment report will show that 63k jobs were added to payrolls – this would mark the third consecutive month that payroll growth comes in above our estimate of breakeven employment of 40k. Pairing this relatively healthy clip of employment growth with initial jobless claims data that points to unseasonably low layoffs and rebound in job posting activity, the evidence suggest that the labor market continued to stabilize in January.

– In this vein, we expect to see that the unemployment rate likely ticked down to 4.3% following the decline in December. As has consistently been the case in recent months, the bulk of hiring in January is likely to be structural – we expect to see health care hiring account for around half of the monthly gain.

Jefferies (Simons): We expect that the m/m print will show an increase of +110k for nonfarm payrolls. We also expect the trend of solid wage growth to continue at an annual pace of +3.7%. We also expect that the unemployment rate will be unchanged at 4.4%.

Scotiabank (Holt): My estimate is for zero change in payrolls. The unemployment rate is expected to be little changed; I went with a dip to 4.3%. The UR is derived from the companion household survey and key is whether its measure of job growth continues to be offset by a shrinking labour pool as it was the prior month.

Mizuho (Pelle): We are looking for a 4.4% unemployment rate, 90k nonfarm payrolls, and 0.3% hourly earnings.

• The unemployment rate is the most important variable in our view. Here we see more risk of a 4.3% print than a 4.5%.

• We are also expecting a -900k revision to the March 2025 level of nonfarm payrolls.

ING (Knightley): The consensus is for a 71k increase in January non-farm payrolls with the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.4%. We are forecasting a modestly stronger outcome of 80,000, but as is always the case with the jobs data, there is very little conviction in our forecast.

TD (Goldberg): We expect January payrolls to show that job gains remain subdued at 45k. Private payrolls likely saw a 40k gain with government posting a modest 5k. The UE rate likely went sideways at 4.4%, reflecting continuedlabor market stabilization. Average hourly earnings (AHE) likely increased 0.3% m/m, translating to 3.7% y/y. Our forecast materializing would raise the risk that the Fed stays on hold for longer.

Daiwa (Werther): Forecast: 35,000…The labor market weakened significantly in 2025, with total nonfarm job growth averaging 83,000 in the first half of last year slowing to 15,000 in 25-H2 (inclusive of a contraction of 173,000 in October, which reflected a one[1]off plunge in federal government payrolls). Moreover, we expect sluggish hiring to persist into 2026, which also suggests the unemployment rate could rise to 4.5 percent. Wage growth has moderated along with conditions in the labor market, and therefore we anticipate average hourly earnings to remain close to the trailing 12-month average of +0.3 percent (associated with a projected year-over-year increase of 3.6 percent, which would be 0.2 percentage point lower from last month’s reading).

Santander (Stanley): The delayed January employment report may show a pickup in seasonally adjusted job gains [of +130k] and a steady unemployment rate. Wages likely posted a hefty increase [of 0.4%], as has become typical in January. The January release will also include the formal incorporation of the March 2025 benchmark revision (the early BLS estimate called for a 911K downward adjustment to the March 2025 payroll level, a result that would roughly cut in half the average job gains over the 12 months ending last March, from about 150K per month to close to 75K).