The Day Ahead: All Eyes on Jobs Report, at Least for Today

It's been a long and interesting week to say the least.  We finally come to the end of the week today, though it certainly wouldn't have felt 'too early' if Friday had fallen on any of the past 4 days.  Bond markets trudged through an ton of economic data on Thursday without much drama.  Today, the script is flipped as they'll trudge through only a a few reports, but with higher chances of drama.

We speak, of course, of the Employment Situation Report set for 8:30am.  There are other pieces of economic data later in the morning, including Factory Orders and ISM New York, but the jobs report (or "NFP" as it's often called due to the primary "Non-Farm Payrolls" component) is head-and-shoulders above the rest in terms of importance and is generally more important than any other piece of Economic data in a given month.

That said, it will only end up causing enough movement to prove its importance if it deviates far enough from the consensus of 125k.  That would mark an 11k increase over last month's 114k, and would be an impressive feat considering the noticeable bias of negative employment-related data over the past few weeks.  Most notably ISM Manufacturing fell to 52.1 from 54.7, Philly Fed employment was down -10.7 vs -7.3, Chicago PMI Employment declined from 52.0 to 50.3, and Challenger Layoffs rose by almost 14k over the previous month. 

In fact the only positive indicator that NFP really has going for it would be yesterday's new and unproven ADP Private Payrolls methodology.  We don't mention its newness to insinuate it will be inaccurate, but to be frank, we're not willing to read any significance into the fact that it "lines up better with NFP revisions for October and September" for the simple reason that those revisions were known quantities before the new ADP numbers were released. 

This may all sound overwhelmingly negative for today's NFP (and private payrolls), but keep in mind that stranger things have happened.  In other words, all the various employment data leading up to NFP can suggest one thing with the report itself, going in the complete opposite direction.  ADP would be happy to see that happen today, though mortgage rates likely would not.