What is NFP in Forex?
NFP means Nonfarm Payroll and it is simply a monthly report that shows figures on the Employment Situation in the United States. The NFP report is released monthly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and you can monitor their release calendar here https://www.bls.gov/schedule/2025/02_sched.htm
NFP shows how many US workers are unemployed but this data excludes workers in the farm or Agric sector and those who work for NGOs. NFP report also shows how many new jobs were created in the U.S. for the month under review.
The NFP report has gained notoriety because of whenever it is released, the price of currency pairs that contain the USD such as EUR/USD, XAU/USD, USD/JPY etc. begin to fluctuate wildly causing support/resistance levels to be broken, and general confusion in the market.
As a forex trader, you need to anticipate the release of the NFP every month so that you are not caught off-guard.
If you want to trade and profit from the price spike that will be caused by the NFP release, you need to prepare a strategy and test it before hand.
If you want to be safe, you can avoid trading when NFP is released and wait for the volatility to die down before you enter the market.
Lots of traders have lost money to NFP because it is difficult to predict if its release will cause the dollar to strengthen so if you predict wrongly, you can lose a lot of money.
The NFP or Nonfarm Payroll report is for the United States economy only and it will tell you amongst other things, if the U.S. unemployment rate has increased or decreased for the month it is released.
Forex traders wait for NFP to be released on the first Friday of every month because its release is usually greeted with heightened volatility in the market.
Many forex traders look to make money from this volatility by trading seconds before the report is released or immediately after the report is released.
To know when NFP will be released, you can use the economic calendar provided by your forex broker to keep track of the date.
