I posted a preview of the NFP employment report up yesterday, here: Its Nonfarm Payroll day on Friday and never too early for a preview!

Just as background,

  • the Bloomberg survey consensus median for the headline is +190K
  • after November's +228K

Capital Economics have written a good preview, some of their main points:

  • Looking for +210K (which would be well above the average monthly gain of 174,000 over the first 11 months of last year)
  • Unemployment rate 4.0% (which would be a 17- year low)
  • average hourly earnings in December, 0.2% m/m gain m/m & 2.4% y/y

More (again, a quick summary):

  • Employment growth still appears to be on a gradual downward trend, with the average monthly gain likely to fall below 150,000 in the second half of 2018.
  • Labour market close to full employment, the acceleration in real economic growth was achieved instead via a pick-up in productivity growth
  • The rise in average weekly hours worked in November is also a good sign for future labour demand
  • We expect the unemployment rate to bottom out at 3.8% this year
  • By year-end we expect wage growth to be above 3%