NFP Showdown! White House Officials Intensively "Set the Stage": 50,000 New Additions or Within Normal Range
BlockBeats News, February 11th. Due to a brief government shutdown of certain departments, the U.S. January non-farm payroll report, originally scheduled to be released last Friday, has been postponed until this Wednesday. Prior weaker-than-expected "secondary" employment data has raised concerns in the market about a slowdown in job growth.
Data shows that in January, ADP's job additions were lackluster, Challenger's job cuts saw a sharp increase, and the four-week moving average of initial jobless claims rose. Additionally, December JOLTs job openings fell to a near five-year low. However, the ISM manufacturing and services employment indices showed relatively stable performance, somewhat alleviating pessimistic expectations.
Ahead of the non-farm report, White House officials heavily guided market expectations. White House Senior Trade Advisor Peter Navarro stated that there should be a "significant downward adjustment" to reasonable monthly job growth expectations. He believed that in the current context of deporting undocumented immigrants and a shrinking labor force, monthly job growth of about 50,000 could be considered a "steady level," and the reference point should no longer be the six-figure growth seen during the Biden era.
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett also commented that job data might show weakness due to a decline in the labor force population. However, he emphasized that this is not contradictory to strong GDP growth and increased productivity, and the market should not panic excessively.
Furthermore, the final value of the 2025 annual benchmark revision for job data is also worth noting. Preliminary data had shown a downward revision of nearly a million jobs, briefly causing market turbulence. As the non-farm data approaches, the market's assessment of the Federal Reserve's policy path and the true strength of the labor market may face a critical test.
