To put this in context so you see why the threshold is important > payrolls might have grown about 60,000 less per month on average last year than the roughly

To put this in context so you see why the threshold is important > payrolls might have grown about 60,000 less per month on average last year than the roughly 250,000 run-rate derived from the agency’s monthly employment report. So net they grew 190k per month. You might think to yourself "well that's nearly the same and still pretty good right?". Not really. 200k per month is the magic number that traders are looking for when they trade the NFP[1] number. If the economy doesn't grow by 200k jobs then the unemployment is rising because US population growth is about 200k per month so you need that many new jobs per month for the unemployment rate to stay flat. So not only does this make it less on an absolute basis, because it goes below that threshold it indicates that the economy was shrinking, not growing. [1] Non-farm payroll https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nonfarmpayroll.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nonfarmpayroll.asp