Total Nonfarm Payrolls

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' first estimate for August 2026 puts 159.08 million jobs on the payrolls of U.S. businesses and government agencies. That is 162,000 more than BLS's current estimate for July 2026. Over the past year the count grew by 603,000 jobs, from 158.47 million in August 2025.

The count is of jobs, not people. Someone on two payrolls is counted twice. It covers private businesses and federal, state and local government, and leaves out farm workers, household workers, the self-employed, unpaid family workers and the military. The number of people with jobs comes from a separate household survey, and a separate page tracks the share of those workers who hold more than one.

Payroll numbers are estimates from a sample of employers, and they change after they first appear. BLS revises each month twice, one and two months later, then again each February, when it lines the March level up with unemployment insurance tax records. In February 2026 that step cut its March 2025 level by 898,000 jobs. BLS says a one-month change needs to be larger than about 122,000 jobs to stand out from sampling error, so smaller moves are described here as little changed. BLS also applied temporary adjustments from March 2020 to October 2021, so comparisons with those months carry that caveat.

The monthly change is a net figure: jobs added minus jobs lost at the pay period that includes the 12th. It is not a count of hires, and it says nothing about pay, hours or job quality. The JOLTS Quits Rate, the Indeed Job Postings Index, Continued Unemployment Claims and Youth Unemployment each measure a different part of the job market.