Non Farm Payrolls; is the USA’s recent positive employment data likely to continue?
Friday September 1st witnesses the latest report from the BLS (Bureau Of Labour Statistics) concerning the NFP data (non Farm payroll). For the uninitiated amongst us, this data release, generally published on the last Friday of the month, reveals how many jobs the USA economy has officially created during the month in which the report is published. Therefore, this latest report covers August’s job creation. The NFP release forms part of a data series published by the BLS on the day; the headline unemployment rate is also published, as are the statistics on the weekly hours worked, any change in hourly earnings, the underemployment rate and the participation rate.
The key headline NFP reading arrives the day after the latest weekly unemployment claims and continuous claims data are published, the series of releases by the BLS also come during the same week that a private jobs data firm; ADP publish their latest data which, when revealed on Wednesday August 30th, came in ahead of forecast at 237k for August, beating the 201k for July and significantly above the forecast of 185k.
This single ADP employment change metric, is often used as a leading fundamental indicator for investors and analysts, in order to attempt to predict if the forthcoming NFP figure will either: beat, miss, or come in right on the forecast. The forecast for Friday, from the panel of economists polled by news agencies such as Bloomberg and Reuters, is for a fall to 180k, from the 209k recorded for the month of July.
Our recommendation is that investors should not only be guided by the most recent forecast, but be mindful of all the recent jobs data which can offer up some suggestions as to where the figure printed on Friday might come in. A further recommendation is that traders should remain hyper vigilant when the key NFP reading is published, as historically this major economic calendar event, has the capacity to move U.S. dollar markets and the leading U.S. equity indices, when finally released at 12:30pm GMT.
Key current employment/unemployment data for the USA
• ADP employment change August 237k
• NFP July reading 209k
• Unemployment rate July 4.3%
• Average earnings growth (YoY) July 2.5%
• Labour force participation rate July 62.9%
• Underemployment rate July 8.6%
• Challenger job cuts July -37.6%
• Initial weekly jobless claims (August 19th) 238k
• Continuous claims (August 12th) 1951k.
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