Good Friday morning.
The weekend is almost here, and none too soon. In about an hour, we will get the NFP data. In a nation with a labor pool of 143,000,000, this monthly data point attempts to ascertain, in near real time, what employment changes occurred over the prior month. It is subject to initial reporting errors, modeling flaws, and future revisions.
And yet, traders feel it moves markets, and they add or subtract risk accordingly.
The consensus is that private payrolls (excluding government) rose by 75,000. If the Labor Participation Rate increased — more people started looking for work — that might push the Unemployment rate higher. There is still some noise in the data from the end of the decennial census taking, as the rest of the census takers get their walking papers.
As always, we remind you that any single data point matters less than the overall trend, which has been anemic. Watch the three big leading components to the NFP: Hours worked, temp hires, and income.
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You know the drill: BLS report release at 8:30am, comments to follow.
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