A job seeker holds a flyer as he receives information about education careers in the Los Angeles Unified School District during a job and resource fair on July 29, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.
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Following a disappointing July jobs report that showed the economy lost jobs that month, traders on prediction market platforms believe there will be a rebound in jobs in August, but it may not be as strong as economists think.
Kalsi speculators see a 50-50 chance that more than 50,000 jobs will be created last month. This represents a slightly lower outlook than the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 53,000 jobs created in August.
Traders are asking whether they think the U.S. added more than a certain number of jobs in the same month based on contracts on the market. Contracts are settled using official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Prediction market traders at Polymarket give a 48% chance that the economy will create more than 50,000 jobs in August.
Prediction market traders and economists have overestimated payrolls for the second month in a row. Both men predicted six-digit job creation in June, when the actual number was just under 60,000, and that the economy would create jobs in July, but ended up losing jobs.
With that in mind, Karshi traders see a wide range of hits and misses. Speculators on the platform put the probability of a contract suggesting the U.S. actually lost jobs last month at about 1 in 4, and similar odds for another contract asking whether the country created more than 80,000 jobs over the same period.
The August employment report will be distributed on Fridays at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalsi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and minority ownership.
