湿了的鞭炮 - 真形象

July jobs report seen as wet firecracker
Sluggish hiring expected though not all bad news

By Greg Robb, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The July nonfarm payroll report, like a wet firecracker, may spark and smoke but is ultimately expected to be disappointing, economists and labor market experts said.

Economists expected a slight increase in the number of private-sector jobs created in July compared to June, just not at a strong enough pace to make any progress on bringing down the nearly double-digit unemployment rate, analysts said of the report due to be released by the Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Friday.

"We expect more of the same -- sluggish hiring, subdued job growth," said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

Economists expect the private sector added 100,000 jobs in July. This will be higher than the 83,000 jobs created in June. See MarketWatch's calendar and forecasts of major U.S. indicators

Labor market economists estimate it will take sustained job gains above roughly 150,000 per month to make a dent in the unemployment rate.

The jobs data will distorted again by temporary jobs at the Census Bureau. In July, the Census let go about 160,000 workers who went door-to-door during the spring to collect the data. The number of temporary census workers dropped by 225,000 in June.

As a result, the total nonfarm payroll is expected to drop by 60,000 in July after falling 125,000 in the previous month.
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Top Biden aide on jobs, unemployment benefits

Jared Bernstein, chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, talks to MarketWatch about when private-sector hiring will pick up and the case for extending unemployment benefits.

The unemployment rate is expected to tick higher to a seasonally adjusted 9.6% from 9.5% in June as some workers re-enter the workforce.

If the data is in line with forecasts, the report will not be all bad news, economists said.

It will show continued growth in private payrolls since the beginning of the year and could reassure investors that the economy is not sliding into a double-dip recession, said John Ryding, an economist at RDG Economics.

Jesse Harriot, whose official title at Monster.com is chief knowledge officer, stressed in an interview that his survey of many on-line hiring sites indicates the labor market was slowly healing.

"We haven't regained all the ground lost in the recession, but we're trending in the right direction," Harriot said.

Private-sector employment has risen 593,000 so far in 2010, or about 99,000 per month on average. But the sector was 7.9 million below its prerecession level.

Because Friday's report comes after two months of disappointing economic statistics, much of the optimism about the recovery has slipped away.

Given the negative mood, Ryding said the increase would probably have to be over 130,000 for the market to view the report as good news.

Fed watchers said the July unemployment news, especially a very weak report, will have an outsized impact on the Federal Reserve's deliberations on the course of monetary policy at their meeting next Tuesday.

If July payrolls are weak, then there is a decent chance that Fed officials will take some quantitative easing step in order to convey the sense they are doing something to help the economy gain traction, wrote Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, in a note to clients.

On the other hand, a strong report would keep the Fed on the sidelines, he said.

Charles Plosser, the president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, said recently that a true picture of the health of the labor market would not come until the autumn when the census impact has evaporated.

There are still 339,000 temporary workers on the census payroll.

Analysts were not swayed much by the estimate of private-sector employment in July from payrolls processing firm ADP released Wednesday. See full story.

The firm found that private-sector employment rose 42,000 in July for the sixth consecutive monthly gain, up from 19,000 in June.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims rose by 19,000 to 479,000 in the week ended July 31. Read comprehensive coverage of claims data.

Analysts at Action Economics said the jobless claims data in the month imply some downside risk to the nonfarm payroll report but were not going to alter their forecast of a gain of 80,000 jobs in July