Kevin Spires, CFA, FRM
At 8:30 am EST Friday morning, the monthly Jobs Report will be released. Currently, The Bloomberg Consensus is for an increase of 150k Jobs in May. Leading up to the Jobs Report, I will review my favorite employment indicators and see what estimates drawn from these indicators would predict. Today, I will review the Senior Loan Officer's Survey and the Temp Employment indicators.
At 8:30 am EST Friday morning, the monthly Jobs Report will be released. Currently, The Bloomberg Consensus is for an increase of 150k Jobs in May. Leading up to the Jobs Report, I will review my favorite employment indicators and see what estimates drawn from these indicators would predict. Today, I will review the Senior Loan Officer's Survey and the Temp Employment indicators.

The first of the employment indicators I review to assess the underlying trend in employment growth is the Fed's Senior Loan Officer Survey. Specifically, I look to see if C&I loan terms to Small Business are becoming tighter or easier. Easier terms lead to faster employment growth with a 0-2 quarter lead. The current easing in terms by Senior Loan Officers implies employment growth of 250k/month. This factor has not changed from the past month and won't change until the next quarterly SLOS report due in late July/Early August.

The second indicator I will review this week is the growth rate in Temp Employment. Released in the Jobs Report, total Temporary Worker employment leads overall employment by 2-4 months. Average job growth predicted by this indicator is 150k-200k.
At first glance, the May Jobs Report could come in much higher than consensus and I will update my thoughts as the week progresses and the ADP Employment Report and other reports are released. But base on these two indicators, underlying Employment fundamentals are strong enough to expect an increase of 200k jobs this past month.