Unemployment Rate

The unemployment rate is the share of the labor force that's actively looking for work but currently without a job. It's released alongside NFP in the US, and as its own release in most other economies, and sits alongside inflation as one of the two things most central banks explicitly target.

This is the one major indicator where "better than forecast" and "good news for the currency" don't automatically line up the same way as elsewhere. A falling unemployment rate is good news for the economy and is read as a currency-supportive beat, even though the number itself moved down -- Macrolens' own scoring accounts for this by inverting the surprise direction specifically for this release.

If the unemployment rate is expected to hold at 4.0% and instead falls to 3.8%, that's a beat for the currency (more people working than expected) even though the reported number is numerically lower than forecast. Conversely, a rise to 4.3% against an expected 4.0% is a miss -- more people unemployed than the market was pricing in, generally weighing on the currency.