Earlier posted previews:

This one now via HSBC:

Nonfarm payrolls fell 33,000 in September.

  • State level figures show that payroll employment in Florida fell by 127,000. This largely reflected the effects of Hurricane Irma, as many people were unable to work because their workplaces were not open or because they had temporarily been evacuated from their regions. The majority of these workers will have returned to their jobs in October and should therefore add to overall national increase in payrolls for the month.
  • State level figures for Texas suggest that there will be a similar, but much smaller, impact from persons returning to work following Hurricane Harvey.

We expect that nonfarm payrolls rose 300,000 in October.

  • This month's release may shed some light on whether the sharp 0.5% rise in average hourly earnings in September was partly distorted by the hurricanes.
  • The September report showed a sharp drop in food services employment which is likely to be reversed in October.
  • Since average wages in the food service industry are lower than the national average, the temporary decline in jobs in this industry may have indirectly boosted the overall average for hourly wages.
  • We expect that average hourly earnings were unchanged m-o-m in October. The y-o-y rate of increase could fall to 2.5%, down from 2.9% in September.
  • In addition, we forecast the unemployment rate rose to 4.3% in October from 4.2% in September.

And, Deutsche Bank (note, written prior to ADP employment on Wednesday) :

With September's soft CPI print providing a little more ammunition to the Fed's doves, employment data is crucial to the Fed's narrative for continued gradual rate hikes.

We are expecting a sharp rebound in payroll growth (+250k forecast vs. -33k previous), supported by a dissipation of hurricane effects; low jobless claims during the survey week; and robust supporting evidence of solid job growth from the ISM employment subcomponents.

  • However, there is considerable uncertainty around this expectation.
  • Indeed, after Hurricane Katrina, which exhibited a similar plunge in job growth in the September 2005 print, it took until November 2005 for job growth to return to its earlier trend.

Within the other details of the report,

  • average hourly earnings growth should slow (0.1% m-o-m vs 0.5%), which could lower the year-over-year growth rate to 2.6%, down from the post-crisis high of 2.9% in September. This retracement is due both to hurricane effects, which we believe boosted September average hourly earnings growth by at least 4bp, as well as other statistical regularities that we have noticed (e.g., bias tied to when the 12th falls within the survey week and how many work days there are in the month) that also point to a softer average hourly earnings print.
  • We expect the unemployment rate to be unchanged (4.2%) at its lowest level since early 2001.