REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Via Dave Lutz at JonesTrading, here are four things that traders are looking at ahead of the jobs report:
Some Fun facts about the payroll # today:
- The January payroll change is tricky, because there are sizable movements occurring beneath the surface. In a typical year, there are substantial layoffs of holiday-related seasonal hires as well as diminished outdoor economic activity in sectors such as construction - The Bureau of Labor Statistics accounts for this in the January seasonal adjustment factors, which are equally large. These are by far the largest adjustments applied to any month of the year. (Here's Jim O'Sullivan of High Frequency economics on this trend.)
- Bloomberg notes in nine of the past 10 years, the government's initial print for January was lower than the median forecast by an average of 57,000.The biggest miss was in 2011, when the median called for a 146,000 increase and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 36,000 jobs were added. (Here's Business Insider's Sam Ro on past January misses.)
- If expectations are met it will mean the US labour market has generated 200,000 or more jobs for the 12th month in a row, the best such run since 1994, according to Reuters.
- Focus is on wage growth- Average earnings are forecast to have grown 0.3% month-on-month, rebounding from a 0.2% contraction in December. A miss will be viewed dovish. (Here's Deutsche Bank's Joe LaVorgna on wage growth.)