What Goldman Sachs economists have to say about non-farm payrolls

While we believe payrolls and average hourly earnings are both likely to miss consensus estimates, we think tomorrow's employment report may be somewhat less important than usual for the monetary policy outlook, because:

  1. recent data have been firm so we have some room for a miss
  2. the August seasonal issue is now well known so even a somewhat larger miss may not significantly alter the staff view, and
  3. there are several months between now and December to make up for any weakness in Friday's report