The Quick Answer
Our July 2026 jobs report prediction comes down to one question: is June's +57K a stumble or a stall? The labor market is the quiet macro story under the oil noise, and the Kalshi jobs market prices the July print across a ladder of strikes. Eight AI models priced the ladder in one coherent pass from the same data card of fetched BLS history and stated macro headwinds, and the blend puts "above 100K" at 33%. Below: the full table, a worked example of how I read a single rung against the model split, and where the market has drifted since we froze the panel.
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The Ladder: July 2026 Nonfarm Payrolls
The BLS run at the heart of the panel's data card is the argument in six numbers: +160K in January, -156K in February, +214K in March, +148K in April, +129K in May, and +57K in June. Here is how each seat priced the July rungs against that run and the stated headwinds.
| Jobs Above | Kalshi | AI blend | ChatGPT (GPT-5.5) | Claude Fable | Claude Opus | Claude Sonnet | Gemini 3.1 Pro | GLM 5.2 | Kimi K3 | DeepSeek V4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -25K | 96¢ | 88% | 83% | 93% | 87% | 92% | 85% | 88% | 85% | 92% |
| 0 | 93¢ | 80% | 77% | 88% | 79% | 86% | 72% | 78% | 79% | 80% |
| 10K | 91¢ | 75% | 73% | 85% | 76% | 82% | 65% | 72% | 76% | 74% |
| 25K | n/a | 68% | 67% | 80% | 70% | 76% | 53% | 64% | 71% | 65% |
| 50K | 71¢ | 57% | 56% | 68% | 59% | 64% | 38% | 52% | 62% | 54% |
| 75K | n/a | 44% | 45% | 55% | 48% | 50% | 24% | 40% | 52% | 42% |
| 100K | 31¢ | 33% | 34% | 40% | 36% | 36% | 14% | 28% | 42% | 32% |
| 125K | 22¢ | 23% | 24% | 27% | 26% | 24% | 7% | 18% | 33% | 22% |
| 150K | n/a | 14% | 16% | 16% | 17% | 14% | 3% | 11% | 24% | 14% |
| 175K | n/a | 9% | 10% | 9% | 11% | 8% | 1% | 6% | 17% | 8% |
| 200K | n/a | 5% | 6% | 5% | 6% | 4% | 0% | 3% | 12% | 4% |
| 225K | n/a | 3% | 4% | 2% | 4% | 2% | 0% | 2% | 7% | 2% |
| 250K | n/a | 2% | 2% | 1% | 2% | 1% | 0% | 1% | 5% | 1% |
The row that tells the story is 75K: the blend has already dropped to 44% here from 57% at 50K, which puts the panel's 50% crossing in the mid-60Ks and makes the blend's nonfarm payrolls forecast softer than a casual read of the table suggests. Gemini is the outlier all the way down the column (24% here, 14% at 100K), reading June's +57K as the new baseline rather than a one-month air pocket. Kimi K3 carries the fattest right tail on the board, still holding 24% at 150K. Two notes on the Kalshi column: the prices are the July 27 snapshot the panel was priced against (the models never saw them), and the panel priced a fixed rung set, so the live board also trades intermediate strikes (20K through 90K) that this table doesn't show. An n/a rung means the panel priced a threshold Kalshi wasn't quoting at the snapshot.
The Reasoning
Three of the eight seats' write-ups are shown here; every seat's full ladder is in the table above.
ChatGPT (GPT-5.5): The recent path argues for a softer baseline than the January-April average: June’s +57K is the most relevant observation, May was still moderate at +129K, and February’s negative print shows that weak outcomes are plausible even without a recession call. I put the central tendency around 60K-80K, with uncertainty wider than usual because payrolls are noisy, revisions can be large, and the stated oil shock plus tariff uncertainty should restrain hiring intentions. That makes outcomes above 100K possible but no longer the modal case, while another near-zero or slightly negative print deserves meaningful weight. I am not treating the February -156K print as the new normal, but it fattens the left tail. The right tail remains open because prior months showed 148K-214K gains, though I discount a return above 175K as less likely under the current slowdown narrative.
Claude Fable: The recent trend is clearly decelerating: +214K in March, +148K April, +129K May, then a sharp step down to +57K in June, with the February -156K print showing this economy can produce outright negative months. Cited headwinds (oil shock, tariff uncertainty) argue the June slowdown is at least partly persistent rather than pure noise, but payrolls mean-revert and the standard error on any single print is roughly 70-100K. I therefore center my July distribution around +70-85K, a modest bounce from June toward the recent trend, but well below the spring pace, with a fat left tail acknowledging recession-style downside. That gives high confidence in a positive print (~88%), roughly even odds around 75K, about 40% above 100K, and rapidly diminishing probability past 150K, since a 175K+ print would require a hiring reacceleration nothing in the data supports. Tail probabilities above 200K reflect only revision/surprise noise.
Claude Opus: The six-month run (160, -156, 214, 148, 129, 57) averages roughly +92K but is heavily decelerating: the last three months average ~+111K and the newest month, June, printed just +57K. Payroll momentum tends to be persistent month to month, so the June slowdown carries substantial weight, while a single weak month is also frequently mean-reverting or revised. The February negative print shows the series has fat tails in both directions. Oil-shock costs and tariff uncertainty argue for continued hiring restraint, particularly in goods-producing, transport, and small-business payrolls, though healthcare and government hiring typically provide a floor of roughly +50K on their own. I center the July distribution at about +70K, modestly above June to reflect partial mean reversion but below the six-month mean to respect the deteriorating trend. Standard deviation of about 85K reflects the historical spread of forecast errors plus elevated policy noise. That yields near coin-flip odds of clearing +75K, roughly one-in-three above +100K, and low probability above +200K.
Model estimates generated July 27, 2026, price-blind. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial or trading advice. Models are frequently wrong; the market price reflects real traders' money. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange; 18+, availability varies by state.
How To Read A Rung: Worked Example
Take the 100K rung, the one I keep coming back to. That contract resolves Yes if the BLS reports more than 100,000 jobs added in July. At the July 27 snapshot, Kalshi had it at 31¢ while the blend said 33%, so the panel and the crowd essentially agreed the strong-print scenario is a one-in-three shot. The information is in the seats that disagree: Gemini at 14% is pricing a stall, Kimi at 42% is pricing a normal bounce, and both are looking at the same six BLS prints. Remember that February -156K month from the reasoning above; it is doing real work here, because a series that can produce a negative month makes the left tail expensive to dismiss, and that is exactly why no seat prices "above 0" higher than 88%.
What The Market Has Done Since
We refreshed the live board as of 8:50 a.m. ET on August 5, 2026, two days before settlement, and the intermediate strikes the panel table doesn't show are where the action is. The story splits in two. The market's center has barely moved: the crowd's coin-flip point sits near 74K ("above 70K" last traded 56¢, "above 80K" 42¢), and "above 100K" is flat, going from 31¢ at the snapshot to 32¢ now. That center is roughly 10K above the panel's mid-60Ks crossing, so the crowd remains the more optimistic side of this disagreement, just as it was at the snapshot. The left tail is a different story: "above 0" has slipped from 93¢ to 90¢ and "above 10K" from 91¢ to 88¢, so the crowd is paying up for downside protection while holding its central estimate steady. Friday's initial print settles the contracts; later revisions can change the economic story, but not the ladder. The same oil shock the models cited as a hiring headwind is priced on its own board, and we ran the panel on it in the WTI oil 2026 verdict.
Every rung settled on Friday, August 7, 2026: per the market rules, trading closed at 8:29 a.m. ET and the BLS Employment Situation report prints one minute later, a fast scoreboard turnaround. Once it does, all eight seats get graded against the settled ladder on our scoreboard, the same way every verdict we publish is graded against real settlements. Kalshi's rules grade each rung on the payrolls number in the BLS Monthly Employment Situation Report for July 2026, so the initial print is the whole game.
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