Kalshi KXUNRATE: US unemployment rate (U-3) — order book & trade data
26.4K book and trade events for Kalshi's us unemployment rate (u-3) markets, recorded live since 2026-10-01 — about 1,056 events a day.
Coverage
KXUNRATE Unemployment Rate data coverage
What is recorded, how often it updates and how much there is.
Recording since
2026-10-01
25 days so far · no backfill
Events recorded
26,400
≈ 26.4K as of 2026-10-25
Avg events / day
1,056
book snapshot · book delta · trade
Update frequency
Order-book snapshots, deltas and trades streamed in real time
Daily activity · last 25 days
Indicative daily event volume, last 25 days to 2026-10-25. Shape modeled from collector stats; mean matches the average events/day above.
About this market
What is KXUNRATE Unemployment Rate?
KXUNRATE trades the headline unemployment rate on jobs-report day: a tightly spaced ladder of readings in tenths of a percentage point, where the answer is usually either unchanged or one tick away. AymarData has been recording the KXUNRATE series since 2026-10-01 and holds 26.4K events so far — about 1,056 a day. History is forward-only; we record live and do not backfill Kalshi.
The unemployment rate is released with the monthly jobs report, so KXUNRATE's activity bursts at 8:30 ET on the first Friday. Because rounding matters, the contracts at the edges of consensus carry most of the uncertainty and the book is thin away from them.
Use KXUNRATE with Fed and CPI series, timestamps aligned to 8:30 ET, to see whether labour surprises reprice rate odds before or after inflation surprises on the same calendar.
What moves KXUNRATE
- Labour-force participation changes, which move the rate without any change in jobs
- Rounding: a true rate near a boundary can print either side of it
- Jobless-claims data in the preceding weeks
Schema
KXUNRATE Unemployment Rate fields and sample rows
The same columns are returned by the API and in Parquet and CSV files.
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ts_ms | int64 | Exchange event time, Unix milliseconds |
| ticker | string | Full Kalshi market ticker |
| event_type | string | book_snapshot | book_delta | trade |
| side | string | buy / sell on trades; bid / ask on book events |
| yes_bid | number | Best YES bid, 0–1 dollars |
| yes_ask | number | Best YES ask, 0–1 dollars |
| volume | int64 | Contracts traded or resting at the level |
Sample rows
| ts_ms | ticker | event_type | side | yes_bid | yes_ask | volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1790944215488 | KXUNRATE-26NOV-T4.3 | book_snapshot | bid | 0.72 | 0.76 | 268 |
| 1790944216510 | KXUNRATE-26NOV-T4.4 | trade | buy | 0.45 | 0.49 | 964 |
| 1790944216936 | KXUNRATE-26NOV-T4.5 | book_delta | ask | 0.19 | 0.23 | 1978 |
Illustrative rows for the KXUNRATE series; tickers follow Kalshi's naming and prices are YES quotes in dollars (0–1).
Code
Pull KXUNRATE Unemployment Rate in Python, cURL or MCP
Market id: KXUNRATE-26NOV-T4.3. Export AYMARDATA_API_KEY from your dashboard, then run the Python requests example.
import os
import requests
API = "https://api.aymardata.com/v1"
KEY = os.environ["AYMARDATA_API_KEY"] # export AYMARDATA_API_KEY=ad_live_…
H = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {KEY}", "User-Agent": "aymardata-docs/1.0"}
# KXUNRATE: ten minutes of trades and book updates for one contract
trades = requests.get(
f"{API}/trades",
headers=H,
params={
"source": "kalshi",
"market": "KXUNRATE-26NOV-T4.3",
"start": "2026-10-02T12:28:00Z",
"end": "2026-10-02T12:35:00Z",
"limit": 500,
},
timeout=30,
).json()["data"]
last = trades[-1]
print(last["ticker"], last["yes_bid"], last["yes_ask"])
book = requests.get(
f"{API}/book",
headers=H,
params={
"source": "kalshi",
"market": "KXUNRATE-26NOV-T4.3",
"at": "2026-10-02T12:30:00Z",
"depth": 10,
},
timeout=30,
).json()
print(book.get("spread"), len(trades))FAQ
KXUNRATE Unemployment Rate: common questions
How tight is the KXUNRATE ladder?
Strikes are in tenths of a percentage point (for example T4.3, T4.4, T4.5). Most of the probability mass sits on two or three contracts, so the book data is concentrated on those strikes.
Why does KXUNRATE produce fewer events than Fed contracts?
The unemployment rate has fewer plausible outcomes each month and fewer participants have strong views on it, so the book is thinner. Both series spike at release time.
What moves KXUNRATE prices?
Labour-force participation changes, which move the rate without any change in jobs; rounding: a true rate near a boundary can print either side of it; and jobless-claims data in the preceding weeks.
How much KXUNRATE history is available?
Recording began 2026-10-01 and is forward-only. At the time of this page that is 25 days, 26.4K events and about 1,056 events a day.
How do I query KXUNRATE data with the API?
Use market=<full ticker> such as KXUNRATE-26NOV-T4.3 with source=kalshi on /v1/trades or /v1/book, or ask the MCP server for the series by name. The snippets on this page are ready to run with your API key.
Backtest KXUNRATE Unemployment Rate with real tick data
Get an API key, pull your first window and join it with the other sources in the catalog.