Friday’s unemployment reading will be one of the last big-data economic reports that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has before its two-day meeting starting September 16 to decide whether to raise interest rates. One problem that may come with the August report is a seasonality noise. More misses have been reported in August than in most other months in prior years.

As far as the report, the Wall Street Journal is forecasting 220,000 in nonfarm payrolls. Bloomberg currently has the consensus at 223,000 for August.

The private sector payrolls report is expected to show a gain of 211,000 for August, and the official unemployment rate is seen falling to 5.2% in August from 5.3% in July.

On Tuesday we were able to see a soft reading on the Paychex small business report. Other reports will precede the Labor Department report this week, as follows (with Bloomberg estimates):

• Wednesday 8:15 a.m. ADP Employment Report (210,000, versus 185,000 in July)
• Wednesday 8:30 a.m. Gallup U.S. Job Creation Index (no estimates)
• Thursday 7:30 a.m. Challenger Job-Cut Report (no estimates)
• Thursday 8:30 a.m. jobless claims (273,000, versus 271,000 unrevised prior week)

Investors and economists will be watching this unemployment rate on Friday like a hawk. Everyone still seems spooked about the possibility of a September rate hike from the U.S. Federal Reserve. FOMC futures currently have a November timing for the 100% price-in of a rate hike up to 0.25% from a target range of 0.00% to 0.25%. What is interesting about the November timing is that the FOMC meeting schedule only has meetings for September, October and December, meaning that a November hike would be somewhat of a coin toss between October and December.

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