SMD is forecasting 151,000 Non Farm Payroll adds in the September Bureau of labor Statistics Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP) release. This includes a 10% downward adjustment for the Harvey, Irma and Maria hurricanes.
We expect this downward adjustment to be short term, and will be adjusting our next month forecast upward. The hurricanes' damage will not create permanent job losses, and in fact may increase jobs in out months from increased relative construction activity.
Our 151k forecast is well above the Bloomberg consensus of 100k, and above the Bloomberg consensus forecast high of 140k. We think that forecasters are overestimating the effects of the natural disasters on jobs. All else equal, without the impact of the hurricanes, we would have seen jobs increase modestly from the August preliminary 156k. We expect a modest upward revision to the August numbers as well.
Regarding the Unemployment Rate, we expect the rate to stay at 4.4%.
This month SmartMarketData is also giving our first BLS JOLTS estimates. We expect the August JOLTS to come in flat at 6.2 million jobs when announced next Wednesday, and based on our real time look at jobs, we are forecasting the September JOLTS NOW which will be announced NEXT month, at 6.376 million jobs.
Our forecast is based on the LinkUp® Jobs Data Set of over 30,000 companies' job postings. SMD has developed a unique and proprietary real-time look at the true job picture. The LinkUp® job data has over 10 years of history , currently capturing greater than 4 million jobs per day from over 16,000 active companies world wide.
