by Calculated Risk on 8/29/2014 08:22:00 PM

The August employment report will be released next Friday, September 5th and the consensus is that 210 thousand payroll jobs were added in August. Here are two forecasts:

From economist Kris Dawsey at Goldman Sachs:

Employment indicators have strengthened a bit in August vs. July, including the employment components of the available service sector surveys, the Conference Board labor differential, and initial jobless claims. Our preliminary forecast for August payroll job growth is 240k, with the important caveat that we have yet to receive a few key pieces of data for the month, most notably the ISM nonmanufacturing report. ... With no special factors on weather, strikes, unusual composition in the prior month, fiscal policy issues, or obvious seasonal distortions, we think the August report should be a fairly “clean read” on the likely-strengthening underlying trend. We also anticipate a downtick of one-tenth in the unemployment rate to 6.1%, matching its prior cycle low set two months back. Should the participation rate give up its small July increase, the risk is skewed toward 6.0%, in our view.

From Merrill Lynch:

The August employment report is likely to be healthy with nonfarm payroll growth of 245,000 and a decline in the unemployment rate to 6.1% from 6.2%. ... Early indicators of the labor market have all been encouraging with the conference board labor differential narrowing to -12.4% as an increase in respondents believe jobs have become plentiful. Initial jobless claims have remained low, hovering around 300,000, consistent with little firing. Moreover, manufacturing job growth should be strong as suggested by healthy surveys and recent industrial production data.

We expect the unemployment rate to fall back to 6.1%, reversing the increase last month.