May NFP growth at +172K outpaces +85K Bloomberg consensus (87K surprise vs. 53K Mean Absolute Revision goinng from 1st-3rd release in 2025), on top of upward revisions in April and March.

Figure 1: NFP employment (bold blue), civilian employment with smoothed population controls (bold orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold light green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars),  all log normalized to 2025M01=0. Source: BLS via FRED, BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA 2026Q1 2nd release, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (5/7/2026 release), and author’s calculations. 

Figure 2: Civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept smoothed population controls (bold orange), manufacturing production (red), ADP private nonfarm payroll employment (light green), real retail sales, CPI deflated (black), freight services indexes (brown), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (blue bars), all log normalized to 2025M01=0. Source: BLS, ADP,via FRED,  Philadelphia Fed, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Federal Reserve via FRED, BEA 2026Q1 2nd release, and author’s calculations.