Event recaps · US payrolls (NFP) history · 4 Sep 2026, 13:30 UK
Too strong for comfort
In September 2026, with inflation high, a strong jobs report was bad news for crypto. Payrolls beat forecasts by about 100,000, and traders raised bets on a rate hike. Bitcoin fell immediately and kept falling for over two hours. Stocks hardly moved. Twelve days later, the Fed hiked.
- Release
- Friday 4 September 2026, 13:30 UK
- Payrolls
- +162,000 vs about 53,000 to 56,000 expected (BLS, CNBC, Reuters)
- Unemployment
- 4.1%
- July
- Revised to +21,000 from -23,000
- Bitcoin at release
- $81,341
The numbers
Employers added 162,000 jobs in August, roughly three times the forecast. Unemployment fell to 4.1%, and July was revised from a loss of 23,000 to a gain of 21,000. CNBC reported that traders raised bets on a Fed rate hike that month. The BLS later revised August down to 133,000, still well above forecasts.
A fast drop
- 1 13:30 UK: first candle about 1.9% down
- 2 15:50 UK: low, about 3.3% down
Bitcoin fell 1.86% on the first candle and was -2.50% at the hour, #5 of 117 jobs reports at 5.4 times a normal hour. It reached about 3.3% down at 15:50 UK and was -2.21% at four hours. Ether was -3.14% and Solana -2.87% after the first hour. The S&P 500 ETF was -0.11%.
| Market | 5m | 1h | 4h | 24h | 1w | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | −1.86% | −2.50% | −2.21% | −2.05% | −5.25% | 5.4× |
| Ethereum | −2.79% | −3.14% | −2.95% | −2.93% | −2.47% | 5.3× |
| Solana | −2.62% | −2.87% | −2.54% | −1.91% | −4.56% | 5.1× |
| S&P 500 ETF (SPY) | +0.08% | −0.11% | −0.29% | – | – | – |
| Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ) | +0.16% | +0.06% | −0.24% | – | – | – |
Change from the 13:30 UK release. The ETFs are measured from the 14:30 UK open.
Why this one moved so much
The other nine 2026 jobs reports in our data all moved Bitcoin about 1.5% or less in the first hour. After the August report it moved less than 0.1%. The difference here was timing. With annual inflation well above 3% and the Fed considering its first hike in three years, a big jobs beat directly raised the odds of tighter policy. The nearest comparison is the February report in March, a large miss, when Bitcoin fell 1.5% in the first hour and 2.6% over four.
The lesson is that the same surprise can matter very differently depending on what the Fed is weighing. When a hike is in play, strong data hits crypto first and hardest, while stocks may barely react. The Fed raised rates on 16 September. Bitcoin was -5.2% a week after this report.
Sources: release time and figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain), first-print values via ALFRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Crypto: Bitstamp 5-minute candles; SPY/QQQ: IEX. No consensus forecasts are shown because they are proprietary; comparisons are with the previous release. “× normal hour” compares the first-hour move with the median move in matched quiet hours. How we measure it.