Non Farm Payroll is a measures overall strength of the labor market and the employment rate. It accounts for about 80% of the workers who contribute to GDP, reflecting all business employees excluding private household employees, general government employees, and employees of nonprofit organizations. The full report also represents estimates on weekly earnings of these employees and the average work week. NFP is very necessary as a general indicator of the health of the economy; usually it affects the dollar in forex trading. NFP rises steadily: since 1990 it has increased from 109,144 in January of 1990 to 135,106 in May of 2006. When NFP rates are lower than expected it causes selling of the US dollar on the belief that it is weakening, and the opposite is true for an unexpectedly high NFP. NFP is published at 8:30am EST on the first Friday of every month. It tends to cause an average move of 124 pips in the EUR/USD.
