by Calculated Risk on 2/06/2014 06:24:00 PM

My Employment Preview for January: Taking the Over. The annual revision will be released tomorrow too (and revisions to prior months will be important).

From Tim Duy: Another Month, Another Employment Report

I will venture a guess of a 200k gain in nonfarm payrolls for January. ... This is a bit over consensus of 181k, but pretty much right in the middle of the range of estimates (125k-270k). Full disclosure: Last month my forecast was wildly optimistic. Still, I think that report was an outlier. Overall I don't see that the pace of improvement in the labor market has changed dramatically one way or another in the last few months. The economy have been generating 180-200k jobs a month for two years despite the ups and downs in the data. I suspect underlying activity continues to support a similar trend. Any improvements that were evident prior to the December report were likely modest.

CR Note: Unlike Duy, I was pessimistic last month.

Friday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, the Employment Report for January will be released. The consensus is for an increase of 181,000 non-farm payroll jobs in January, up from the 74,000 non-farm payroll jobs added in December. The consensus is for the unemployment rate to be unchanged at 6.7% in January.

• At 3:00 PM, Consumer Credit for December from the Federal Reserve. The consensus is for credit to increase $12.0 billion in December.