Goldman Sachs with their preview of the January Nonfarm Payroll due 5 February 2016 at 8.30 eastern time (1330GMT)
I'll jump straight to the TL;DR version: +170K
You're welcome
ps. Median consensus is +190K after last month's headline at 275K
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The long bit (I've summarised it) ....
- We expect a 170k gain
- Expect the unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 5.0% in January on a rounded basis
- We see some risk that the unemployment rate will round down to 4.9% given our expectation for a strong employment gain and the possibility of a slight decline in participation
- We expect average hourly earnings for all workers to rise 0.4% (mom) in January following a 0.04% decline in December
- Our expectation for a firmer than usual rise in average hourly earnings growth is primarily due to favorable calendar effects
- In addition, we estimate that minimum wage increases in about a dozen states could boost aggregate average hourly earnings by about 0.05%
- However, even a 0.4% increase in January would result in a decline in the year-on-year rate to 2.3% due to unfavorable base effects
More on why GS is below consensus:
- Jobless claims have been higher ... 4-week moving average of claims are higher, to 285K (compared with 271K in in December)
- Manufacturing surveys have shown employment components worsening
- Weather (!) ... Winter storm Jonas will have had an impact, though GS expect it was small
- GS also cite the Conference Board's 'labour differential' (what this does is measure people saying jobs are easy to find vs .those saying jobs are scarce. It was down 0.3 points in January).
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Note also. Annual benchmark revisions will be released along with the report, likely to show fewer joabs added in last 12 months than previously though, by around 200K jobs
