Twin NFP Print Puts Fed Cuts Under the Microscope

Because it offers two months of payroll statistics at once, the US November 2025 jobs report is especially significant. Because of the 2025 federal shutdown, the BLS's "Employment Situation: November 2025" (08:30 a.m. ET today) will combine non-farm payrolls for October and November rather than staggering them across separate releases. This transforms today's print, the first clean read on the labor market since September, into a single data event for markets and condenses several weeks of uncertainty.

Particularly after weak ADP data, consensus is searching for a small November payroll increase of about 50k, which would match a labor market that is cooling but not collapsing. While wage growth is seen muted versus earlier in the cycle, emphasizing a slow labor‑market looseness, the unemployment rate is projected to remain in the mid‑4% area (near the prior 4.3%). Given the broad forecast band and downside risks, surprises in either direction – especially when combined with October's catch‑up numbers – could significantly change the perceived momentum of the labor market.

Markets' major axes are headline NFP versus the ~50k consensus, the combined October + November revisions, the unemployment rate, and mean hourly earnings. These will be read precisely against the recent story: September's 119k increase followed by a large -911k benchmark downward correction over the previous year strengthened the "cooling" narrative. Today's data will enable investors to assess if the 75 basis point cuts by the Fed since September are still well-tuned heading into 2026 or whether a more conservative stance or more easing (if the data are soft) is justified.