What to expect from the US employment report

Tomorrow at 8:30 AM ET/1230 GMT, the US Labor Department will release the employment statistics for the month of April.

Buckle up. The numbers will be a historic.

However, the markets seem to be accepting of historically weak data, as traders look toward the future as opposed to the present.

What is the market expecting? Below are those estimates, but understand that the range of the estimates is rather large. It is anyone's guess what the actual numbers will be in the market reaction

  • Nonfarm payroll is expected to show a drop of -21.705 million jobs. That compares to -701,000 in March (or an additional 21 million job losses). The estimates range from -8.6 million to -30 million.
  • Unemployment rate is expected to rise to 16.0% from 4.4% last month. The low estimate comes in at 11.6%. The high estimate is up at 22%
  • Change in manufacturing payrolls is estimated to decline by -2.5 million versus -18,000 last month. The estimates range from -290,000 to -5 million
  • Average hourly earnings are expected to rise by 0.4%
  • Average hourly earnings year on year is expected to rise by 3.3% versus 3.1% previously
  • There is no estimate for the underemployment rate. As a point of comparison they came in at 8.7% last month

Also scheduled to be released tomorrow in the US:

  • Wholesale inventories for the month of March final will be released at 10 AM ET. The preliminary estimate was -1.0% and that is the estimate for the final release.

Canada will also release their employment statistics tomorrow at 8:30 AM ET/1230 GMT. The expectations are for:

  • net change in employment -4 million versus -1.010 million last month
  • full-time employment last month fell by -474K
  • part-time employment fell by -536.7K
  • the unemployment rate is expected to soar to 18.1% from 7.8%
  • the participation rate is expected to come in at 61.4% versus 63.5%
  • hourly wage rate is expected to rise by 7.5% versus 6.1%

Housing starts for the month of April will be released at 8:15 AM/1215 GMT with expectations of 105.0 K versus 195.2 K last month