Wednesday, April 2, 2014

March '14 NFP guesstimate; manufacturing ISM results ...

Our NFP model spit out a net change of +225K for March '14.  The consensus is 206K.  We think the private payroll number will disappoint but will be more than offset by government hiring.  Economists out there are expecting private NFP to go up by 215K.  

While the ISM manufacturing employment sub-index showed deceleration in hiring, Fed banks' regional surveys were mixed.  In addition, we saw online help-wanted ads decline in March.  The always suspicious ADP figure also came in a bit below expectations, 191K vs 193K.  For these reasons, we expect overall change in NFP to come in above the consensus, but private NFP may disappoint.


April Fool's Day made us look like fools as ISM manufacturing came in slightly below expectations.  The final number was 53.7, versus our 54.4 and the Street's 54.0, and up from Feb. 53.2.  The positives included production sub-index going over 50.0 to 55.9; and growth in the backlog of orders accelerating to 57.5.  The not-so-good news was that growth in manufacturing hiring slowed down a bit in March. 


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