Friday:
• At 8:30 AM, the Employment Report for August. The consensus is for an increase of 230,000 non-farm payroll jobs added in August, up from the 209,000 non-farm payroll jobs added in July. The consensus is for the unemployment rate to decrease to 6.1% in August. As always, a key will be the change in real wages – and as the unemployment rate falls, wage growth should eventually start to pickup.
From Nick Timiraos at the WSJ: Things to Watch in Friday’s Jobs Report
Any pickup in wages would provide a concrete sign of firming in the labor market, since few measures reflect the health of the job market like the price of labor. Average hourly wages rose just 1 cent in July to $24.45, an increase of 2% from a year earlier and the 60th straight month that year-on-year hourly wage growth has stayed below 2.5%. Before the recession, growth routinely exceeded 3%.
Also keep an eye on a change in the work week, which rose 0.3% in July from June, the first increase since April. Average weekly earnings, at $843.53, rose 2.3% from a year earlier in July.