Tonight's Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) report may see a significant downside surprise, with a 75% probability of January's job additions being below 50,000.

According to PolyBeats monitoring, the U.S. will announce the January seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll data tonight at 9:30 p.m. (UTC+8), with a previous value of 50,000 and an expected value of 70,000. This report, which was delayed from its original February 6 release date to today due to a brief government shutdown at the end of January, is the first nonfarm payroll data of 2026 and will have a significant impact on Federal Reserve policy expectations, U.S. stocks, the U.S. dollar, and more. The current market focus is on whether the employment growth will continue to be sluggish and whether any revisions will further reinforce signals of a "labor market freeze" or "slowdown."

On Polymarket, the current probabilities for the nonfarm payroll data are as follows: the probability of a significantly negative surprise is 10%, 0 to 2.5 thousand is 33%, 2.5 to 5 thousand is 32%, 5 to 7.5 thousand is 25%, and 7.5 to 10 thousand is 11%.

It is worth noting that this report also includes annual benchmark revisions, which are expected to significantly downwardly revise the 2025 employment data (preliminary estimates suggest a downward revision of about 911,000 in employment growth from April 2025 to March 2025), which could further confirm labor market weakness.

Prior to the nonfarm payroll release, White House officials have been actively guiding market expectations. White House Senior Trade Advisor Peter Navarro stated that expectations for monthly job growth should be "substantially lowered," suggesting that in the current context of deportations of illegal immigrants and a shrinking labor force, monthly job growth of around 50,000 should be seen as a "steady state" and not compared to the six-figure growth seen during the Biden era. White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett also suggested that employment data may appear weak due to a decline in the labor force population, but this is not inconsistent with strong GDP growth and productivity gains, and the market should not panic excessively.

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