How to View Unemployment and Payrolls This Week

This coming Friday we will get to see the U.S. Labor Department’s report on payrolls and unemployment data for the month of July. Investors get many sneak peaks and teases this week from the employment reports that the public tries to use as a filter for the actual employment situation report on the first Friday of each month.

Bloomberg has a consensus estimate of 212,000 in nonfarm payrolls and 210,000 in private sector payrolls for the month. It also sees the official unemployment rate holding pat at 5.3% in July. Dow Jones has a forecast of 225,000 in nonfarm payrolls, and it noted further than some economists now expect the official unemployment rate to tick down to 5.2%.

The ISM manufacturing reading has a slight positive read on employment, even if the broader measure of the full ISM Manufacturing Index was lower growth. That ISM report, again on manufacturing, showed that the Employment Index was 52.7% — down 2.8 percentage points from the June reading of 55.5%.

On Wednesday we get the ADP Employment Report for July, and Bloomberg has an expected gain of 210,000 payrolls. This covers some 400,000 U.S. businesses and is a sampling of 23 million payrolls. ADP’s June figure was 237,000.

Wednesday morning will bring the Gallup U.S. Job Creation Index, followed by the Challenger Job-Cut report on Thursday. Estimates were not readily available on either report.

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Another report that will be issued is the ISM Non-Manufacturing Index on Wednesday. That has an employment component similar to ISM’s manufacturing index. As a reminder, the United States is considered a services economy now.

Thursday morning also will bring the weekly jobless claims from the U.S. Labor Department, which will be the last look at data from July. Bloomberg has a consensus of 273,000 for last week, versus 267,000 from the prior week’s report.