PRESENTING: Wall Street's Most Bullish Prediction For The Jobs Report
The consensus estimate for the change in nonfarm payrolls is 165k, with calls ranging from 121k to 225k.
Societe Generale's Brian Jones is the economist on the high end of that range.
Here's his commentary:
We expect the BLS to report that nonfarm payrolls expanded by a well-above-consensus 225,000 in February – the strongest net hiring since last November. Fundamental and technical factors point to solid job growth last month. Indicative of a slower pace “pink slipping”, the average number of persons filing initial claims for unemployment insurance remained on a downtrend over the five weeks heading into the February survey, retreating to a five-year low of 355,600. Consistent with unemployed workers finding positions, regular state benefit recipients contracted by 101,000 between canvasses to 3.074 million – the lowest tally since June 2008. On the technical side, population-weighted heating degree days were just marginally above normal in February, supporting our view that weather conditions will have little impact on the February report. Looking backward briefly, we would not be surprised to see the previously posted jobs gains in January (157,000) and December (196,000) marked higher in the February report.
Every economists' model is probably different and sensitive to different factors.
The jobs report comes out at 8:30 AM ET.