We expect the non-farm payrolls number for March to come in at 232,000 net new jobs. Our forecast is higher than the Bloomberg consensus of 175,000, and higher than the top of the Bloomberg forecast range of 202,000.
We saw active and created job postings decelerate slightly at the beginning of March, only to accelerate toward the end of the month suggesting April may be another strong number.
We also note that our Job Post Duration indicator has ticked up for the 4th straight month to 86 days suggesting the labor market continues to tighten. We use our Duration indicator as a proxy for how hard it is for employers to hire. A high Duration suggests it is harder to hire, and the market for workers is tight. For context, this indicator was around 75 at the bottom of the Great Recession, and currently is off from the high of 98 reached early in 2016.
Our forecast is based on proprietary research which incorporates the LinkUp real-time Job Posting data set and analytics. The LinkUp data set consists of raw job post data gathered from over 30,000 companies, and is predictive of future hires.
