NFP: a hot day for the US dollar

It’s the first Friday of September that means that the United States will release labor market data for August at 15:30 MT time. This week has already been very volatile for EUR/USD and USD/JPY. Will the news release change anything?

The risks

Yes, there are no doubts that this release will have a big impact on the market as it’s the last one before the Federal Reserve’s September meeting.

ADP employment report, which is the same as NFP, except it’s prepared not by the authorities, but by a private entity, showed that 237K jobs were created in America last month compared to 185K expected. After this publication, many market players started thinking that NFP will come out strong as well. Remember though that ADP and NFP don’t always correlate.

History shows that August payrolls tend to disappoint the market. The reasons for such consistent pattern are not quite clear. It may have something to do with seasonal factors: American teachers quit jobs and are re-employed when the new school year starts. August is also a holiday season. Many people who do contract work don't take new assignments. There are also some tricky reasons to believe that wage growth (average hourly earnings) will be lower as well (this deals with the fact how the indicator is counted).

The Fed is closely watching the US economic figures as traders try to predict further actions of the US central bank. The devastating hurricane that ran over Texas diminishes the odds of the Fed’s rate hike this year (although the hurricane won’t affect this month’s NFP). A disappointment in labor data will make the US currency suffer a lot. At the same time, USD bulls will need a reading above the consensus forecast to continue the greenback’s recovery.

The forecasts

Here are the forecasts of some well-known banks.

The impact

>200K – very USD-positive
180K-200K – mildly positive for the USD
150K-180K – mildly negative for the USD
<150 – very USD-negative

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Elizabeth Belugina