Nonfarm Payrolls Preview: Forecast from eight major banks for March jobs report

March's Nonfarm Payrolls report, which is due out on Friday at 12:30 GMT, is set to show an increase of 630,000 jobs. Here you can find the forecasts of economists and researchers of eight major banks regarding the upcoming employment data. 

According to FXStreet’s Analyst Yohay Elam, March's US jobs report will likely mark the beginning of accelerated recovery. Part of that is already reflected in the dollar's value, but probably not all of it. 

RBC Economics

“In the US, vaccinations are progressing rapidly and restrictions are easing nationwide. This tees up for another month of job gains in March, building on February’s large 379K rise.”

NBF

“Payrolls may have increased 600K in the second month of the year. The household survey is expected to show a similar gain in employment, which would be consistent with a two-tick decline in the unemployment rate, to 6.0% (assuming the participation rate recovered some of the ground lost during the pandemic).”

ING

“We forecast NFP to rise 750K versus consensus 600K. The unemployment rate is also expected to dip to 5.9/6.0% from 6.2%. None of this should really sway the Fed, however, which still awaits 10 million people to re-discover work and has gone out of its way to undermine the unemployment rate as a catch-all figure for those unemployed.”  

Deutsche Bank

“We are expecting a +800K increase in NFP as many states reopen or scale back lockdown measures, and this would be the strongest monthly job growth since August. Furthermore, we’re expecting that the unemployment rate will fall to a post-pandemic low of 6.0%. Even if the +800k growth were realised, that would still leave the total number of NFP more than 8.6 M beneath its pre-Covid-19 pandemic peak, and this shortfall is something that Fed Chair Powell has been emphasising, which just shows the distance there’s still to go before the economic damage from the pandemic is repaired.”

CIBC

“Vaccine rollout along with a recovery in mobility indicators suggest that the US labor market heated up in March. Google’s mobility index of retail and recreation activity reached the closest point it’s been to pre-pandemic levels since a year ago in March. Jobless claims also declined, portending an above consensus 850K gain in payrolls and a drop in the unemployment rate to 5.9%. The return to normal weather patterns should have resulted in a bounce-back in hours worked which were impacted by storms in February.”

TDS

“We forecast a 1.0M rise in payrolls in this week's report for March. That said, payrolls are likely to remain well below the pre-pandemic level for a while, even with booming monthly readings. As of February 2021, payrolls were down 9.5 M from the February 2020 level.”

Capital Economics

“We expect the official Nonfarm payrolls to show a 700K gain with a lot of that gain reflecting the rebound in leisure and hospitality employment. With the high-frequency indicators signalling a continued pick-up in activity and stimulus payments beginning to feed through, we expect monthly payroll gains to accelerate over the next few months.”

Citibank

“Citi expectations are close to consensus at 600K. While inflation data is receiving most of the attention, we think the Federal Reserve could be on-track to taper if job growth averages 500K+.”