Preview of Friday's Non-Farm Payrolls

Wall Street is currently expecting payrolls to increase by 190,000 for the month of March. Goldman Sachs is slightly more optimistic with an estimate of 200,000(revised down from 275,000). However this week's ADP number showed a decline of 23,000 jobs. So what is it going to be? One thing to note about the ADP number is that it only tracks private payrolls and does not include government hiring. The US government is expected to hire between 75,000-100,000 census jobs in March, which should provide an artificial boost. Then all of the simpletons on CNBC can finally say that the job market is recovering and now is the time to buy more stocks.

My guess for Friday's number is +50k which without census hiring would be flat to negative. Many US corporations have discovered that they do not need to rehire the people they laid off during the worst of the recession. I doubt they will be so quick to rehire them now. Corporations know that the recent boost in the economy has been due to inventory restocking and will likely wait until end-user demand appears before hiring more personnel.

Black Swan Insights

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