Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer reports:
The February jobs report is expected to show hiring picked up in February, while the unemployment rate held steady. This comes at a crucial moment for markets as stocks have recently been floundering amid fears about economic growth weakening in the US.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly jobs report is slated for release at 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday. Economists expect nonfarm payrolls to have risen by 160,000 in February, while the unemployment rate held steady at 4%, according to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
With markets in a slump — amid a string of weaker-than-expected economic growth data — Citi head of US equity trading strategy Stuart Kaiser told Yahoo Finance that Friday’s jobs report is a “pretty significant risk to the market.”
“A good jobs print helps, but it’s probably not enough to sort things out,” Kaiser said. “And if you got a weak print, let’s say below 125,000 jobs [added], or in particular, if the unemployment rate rose, I think you would have a pretty big pullback in US equities in response to that.”