Nonfarm payrolls: will show labor markets continued to strengthen? - Nomura

Analysts at Nomura offered a preview of the nonfarm payrolls report in a preview.

Key Quotes:

"We expect the February employment report to show that labor markets continued to strengthen, putting additional pressure on the FOMC to stay the course with the current hiking cycle ahead of the 20-21 March meeting. 

We look for a robust 210k addition in nonfarm payroll employment (Consensus: 205k), a steady 0.2% m-o-m increase in average hourly earnings (AHE, Consensus: 0.2%) and a 0.1pp decline in the unemployment rate to 4.0% (Consensus: 4.0%). We view the risks to our AHE forecast as roughly balanced. 

However, this employment report will rightly garner more attention than usual following the market’s reaction to January’s stronger-than the expected wage growth reading."