Why there won’t be a non-farm payrolls report next week | Forexlive

The calendar turns to March on Wednesday and the rule of thumb is that non-farm payrolls comes on the first Friday of the month. So why is the jobs report scheduled for March 10 instead of March 3?

The short answer is that the rule of thumb is wrong. The slightly-longer answer is that it’s because February is the shortest month, so there’s not enough time to prepare.

The full answer is that Bureau of Labor Statistics releases non-farm payrolls on the fourth Friday following the week containing the 12th of a given month, which in March’s case will be the 10th of the month. So because February 10th also fell on a Friday, that only leaves three Fridays in between, which is evidently not enough time to prepare the report.

So instead it falls on March 10.

That leaves puts the Fed in a tricky spot as there will only be a few hours between the 8:30 am ET release of the report and the blackout period beginning at midnight ahead of the March 22 FOMC. That should make for an interesting day.

It’s still early but the consensus so far is +195K jobs with a range of 150-215K.