{"id":437494,"date":"2026-09-04T00:52:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T17:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/preview-august-non-farm-payrolls-by-the-numbers-437494\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T00:52:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T17:52:49","slug":"preview-august-non-farm-payrolls-by-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/preview-august-non-farm-payrolls-by-the-numbers-437494\/","title":{"rendered":"Preview: August non-farm payrolls by the numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>What&#8217;s expected:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Consensus estimate +56K (range -25K to +121K)<\/li>\n<li>July -23K<\/li>\n<li>June +63K<\/li>\n<li>Private consensus estimate +45K<\/li>\n<li>Unemployment rate consensus estimate: 4.1% vs 4.1% prior<\/li>\n<li>Participation rate consensus 61.4% prior<\/li>\n<li>Prior underemployment U6 prior 7.9%<\/li>\n<li>Avg hourly earnings y\/y exp +3.0% y\/y vs +3.2% prior<\/li>\n<li>Avg hourly earnings m\/m exp +0.3% vs +0.1% prior<\/li>\n<li>Avg weekly hours exp 34.3 vs 34.3 prior<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>August jobs so far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ADP employment report +38K (lowest since Jan) vs +47K expected and +46K prior <\/li>\n<li>ISM services employment 47.8 vs 47.4 prior<\/li>\n<li>ISM manufacturing employment 51.2 vs 52.5 exp and 52.8 prior<\/li>\n<li>Challenger Job Cuts 52,881 vs 33,429 prior<\/li>\n<li>Philly employment +27.9 vs +10.0 prior<\/li>\n<li>Empire employment +9.3 vs +11.4 prior<\/li>\n<li>Initial jobless claims survey week 206K vs 187K prior<\/li>\n<li>Revelio Labs +36.5K vs +79.2K prior<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Seasonally,\u00a0the headline reading is weak in August, according to BMO. It has come in below estimates 71% of the time and beating 29% of the time, by 71k and 18k, respectively, on average. Similarly,\u00a036% of previous unemployment prints for August have been higher-than-expected, 28% have been lower-than-estimates, and 36% have matched the consensus.<\/p>\n<p>August can be a tricky month for seasonal adjustments because of school start times so market participants will generally try to filter out educational jobs and look through them.<\/p>\n<p>The trend has been weakening in jobs lately and last week&#8217;s initial benchmark revisions unexpectedly shaved jobs through March.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Still, unemployment is running at just 4.1% and it&#8217;s hard to see it as anything but the oft-discussed &#8216;low hire\/low fire&#8217; economy.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of trading, a soft report is the hint from these numbers and that would place further pressure on the US dollar, which is already weak after surprisingly-dovish comments from Fed Governor Chris Waller on Thursday. USD\/JPY has also been hit by intervention (though not confirmed) and plunged 330 pips on the day, leaving a turbulent dynamic for FX traders through the report.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, equities were a more-straightfoward response to Waller and are also benefitting from new AI model releases that are showing another leap forward. A softer jobs report would lift them further while a hot reading could spoil the party.<\/p>\n<p>A clear spot to look for clues is the front end of the bond curve with US 2-year yields trading at 4.33%. For the moment, the market is just under 50\/50 for a September rate hike.<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s expected: Consensus estimate +56K (range -25K to +121K) July -23K June +63K Private consensus estimate +45K Unemployment rate consensus estimate: 4.1% vs 4.1% prior Participation rate consensus 61.4% prior Prior underemployment&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}