Here's Wall Street's most bearish guess for the Jobs Report
The consensus estimate calls for the creation of 245,000 nonfarm payrolls in March with the unemployment rate sitting at 5.5%.
Morgan Stanley's Ted Wieseman expects the number to come in at 195,000 due to a calendar quirk.
From his note
"Weather was mild in the survey week for the March employment report, but the second half of February was the most unseasonably cold two weeks on average across the country since at least the mid-1990's according to government heating degree days figures. The four weeks through the March survey week as a result were near the coldest full-month period in the government data. So we anticipate weather will be a drag on March job growth after appearing to have been a boost in February looking at indicators like a relatively low number of people in the household survey saying they couldn't work because of bad weather and strong payroll gains in weather-sensitive construction and leisure industries."
Wieseman also expects the unemployment rate to climb to 5.6%.
"Underlying flow data indicated the lower participation rate decline was a result of a jump in discouraged job seekers dropping out of the labor market, with a 295,000 increase in the number of people transitioning from unemployed to out of the labor force from January to February," Wieseman said. "We look for that to partly reverse and lead to an uptick in the participation rate in March, bumping up the unemployment rate to 5.6% even with a solid gain in jobs."
Ultimately, these numbers are extremely difficult to estimate, especially when your talking about an economy with 141 million payrolls.