Will Nonfarm Payrolls revisions hint at a 50 bps Fed cut next week?

• The BLS will release the preliminary benchmark revision to employment data on Tuesday.
• Markets widely expect the Fed to lower the policy rate multiple times this year.
• Standard Chartered analysts think the Fed could opt for a 50 bps rate cut next week.

The United States (US) Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will publish the 2025 preliminary benchmark revision to the Establishment Survey Data on Tuesday, September 9.

The preliminary revision will cover the 12-month period through March 2025 before the final benchmark revision is reported within the employment report of February 2026.

"Official establishment survey estimates are not updated based on this preliminary benchmark revision. The final benchmark revision will be incorporated into official estimates with the publication of the January 2026 Employment Situation news release in February 2026," the BLS notes.

When the BLS released the preliminary annual benchmark revisions in August 2024, it noted that the US economy created 818,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the 12-month period through March 2024. This translated into an actual job growth of 30% less than initially outlined for this period.

In response, the Federal Reserve (Fed) lowered the policy rate by 50 basis points (bps) in September 2024, bringing the fed funds rate to 5% from 5.5%.

US labor market cools down

The latest employment report showed that Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) rose by 22,000 in August. This reading followed the 79,000 increase (revised from 73,000) recorded in July and missed the market expectation of 75,000 by a wide margin. The BLS also noted that it revised down June's NFP by 27,000, from 14,000 to -13,000. This follows a significant negative revision to May NFP growth, from 144,000 to 19,000, reported in July's jobs data.

While speaking at the annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium on August 22, Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged that downside risks to the labor market were rising and noted that tighter immigration policy has led to an "abrupt slowdown" in labor force growth.

According to the CME FedWatch Tool, the probability of the Fed lowering the policy rate by at least a total of 75 bps this year, by opting for 25 bps cuts at each of the three remaining meetings, climbed to nearly 75% from about 40% before the release of the jobs data.

Is there room for a jumbo Fed rate cut next week?

In case the preliminary benchmark revision suggests that conditions in the US labor market were even worse than thought, markets could see this as a development that opens the door for a dovish Fed move at the upcoming policy meeting.

Steve Englander, Head of Global G10 FX Research and North America Macro Strategy at Standard Chartered, noted that the Fed could go for a 'catch-up' 50 bps rate cut at the September meeting, just as it did this time last year.

"Fed rate-cut pricing, now at 28-29bps for September, has yet to shift firmly in that direction. We recognise that we are moving early, but we expect preliminary revisions to employment data for April 2024 to March 2025 to support our 50bps call," Englander explained.

He added, "We maintain our view that headline payrolls and unemployment data underplay the degree of labour-market softening given distortions from the birth-death adjustment and the more clear-cut decline in the employment-population ratio."