Friday’s key economic report will be the unemployment and payrolls numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor. The consensus estimate of 200,000 nonfarm payrolls likely has started getting ratcheted down for the investors and traders who act on individual economic reports.
Thursday’s jobs data followed some weak reporting. Weekly jobless claims, also from the Labor Department, came in at 274,000 in the week ending April 30. The prior week’s 257,000 was expected to rise to only 262,000, and this week’s report broke the trend of very low jobless numbers.
Another report on Thursday was the Challenger Job-Cut Report for the month of April. While job growth remains strong, the number of planned layoffs from U.S. employers is running at the highest pace since 2009. Challenger Gray signaled a 24% increase in job cuts from a year ago. This is on top of energy of course, but also from computers and retail, with layoffs looking up almost 6% to 65,000.
As a reminder, ADP disappointed the economic watchers wanting stronger growth on Wednesday with news that the private sector added only 156,000 to the nation’s payrolls in April. The consensus estimate was closer to 200,000 — and March’s gains were revised a tad lower to 194,000 from 200,000.
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Here are the consensus estimates from Bloomberg for April’s key unemployment and payrolls reports:
- Nonfarm payrolls expected, 200,000, versus 215,000 in March
- Private sector payrolls expected, 195,000, versus 195,000 in March
- Official unemployment rate expected, 4.9%, versus 5.0% in March
- Average hourly earnings expected, up 0.3%, identical to March
- Average workweek, 34.5 hours, versus 34.4 hours in March
Friday’s key payrolls report is one of the biggest reports watched by traders, investors and economic watchers. The news on the jobs front has remained solid so far, while the news around gross domestic product has been very weak.
Stay tuned.
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