Nonfarm payroll employment
Number of jobs on nonfarm payrolls in the month, seasonally adjusted, from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey of businesses and government agencies run by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The monthly jobs count of the national Employment Situation report and the State Employment and Unemployment release. Counts jobs on nonfarm payrolls, not people: someone with two jobs counts twice. It covers full-time and part-time employees paid for any part of the pay period that includes the 12th of the month, and excludes the self-employed, farm workers, private household workers and unpaid family workers. For employed people from the household survey use employment_population_ratio; for May job counts by occupation use oews_employment.
Key facts
- Nonfarm payroll employment in the United States was 159,044,000 jobs in September 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- California had the highest nonfarm payroll employment of 51 states in August 2026, at 18,177,200 jobs, and Wyoming the lowest, at 295,700 jobs. Source: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- Published for 52 places, with figures from January 1939 to September 2026.
Rankings
US states by nonfarm payroll employment, August 2026
Places with data
Countries
Regions and states
- California
- Texas
- Florida
- New York
- Pennsylvania
- Illinois
- Ohio
- Georgia
- North Carolina
- Michigan
- Virginia
- Vermont
- Washington
- Maryland
- Wisconsin
- Massachusetts
Use this data in your AI agent
Invokely serves this figure to AI assistants through MCP and to code through a REST API, with the source and citation attached. Ask your assistant:
Which places have the highest nonfarm payroll employment? Use official data and cite it.
rank_places {"indicator":"nonfarm_payroll_employment","level":"region","within":"United States"}
GET https://invokely.ai/api/v1/rank?indicator=nonfarm_payroll_employment&level=region&within=United%20States