February Jobs Preview: A Big Slowdown On Deck

Ahead of Friday's jobs report, consensus is that the pace of nonfarm payrolls growth is expected to cool notably in February (as the US seemingly can't keep hiring every illegal immigrant Biden flies in on Illegal Alien Airlines), though the unemployment rate is likely to be unchanged, as hourly earnings ease off the gas.

As Newsquawk notes, weekly jobless claims that coincide with the BLS survey window ticked up relative to the January period, both on an absolute and average basis while today's Challenger job-cuts report found that February’s 84,638 job cuts were the highest for the month since 2009, when 186,350 job cuts were announced in the second month of the year; consumers also turned more pessimistic about labor market prospects in February, both in terms of the present situation and the outlook; the employment sub-indices within the ISM manufacturing and services PMI data both fell on the month too. Analysts explained away the one-off nature of the bounce in January’s average hourly earnings, and expect this month’s data will also show a cooling in wage gains, both on a monthly and annualized basis, while workweek hours are seen ticking up. Looking ahead, analysts have been arguing that broader trends and forward-looking indicators suggest wage growth will continue to cool in the months ahead, allowing the Fed to become more confident that inflation is easing sustainably, helping it to pivot to looser monetary policy in the months ahead.

EXPECTATIONS: