There Is A Striking Amount Of Consensus About What Next Week's Jobs Report Will Say
Steven Englander, a currency analyst at Citi, notes an unusual amount of consensus going into next week's jobs report:
The Bloomberg NFP consensus now incorporates about 50 forecasts. What is striking is:
1) how tight the consensus is - of 50 forecasts, 43 are in a 190k-230k range. The standard deviation of 17k for the 50 forecasts is the lowest of the last 10years (matched only once each in 2007 and 2008)
2) skew to the right - the median forecast is 210k - there is only one forecast more than 20k below 210k the median and six forecasts above 230k. The forecast below is 25k below the median, the six forecasts above 230k average 37k higher.
He goes on to note that this coincides with historically low volatility in markets, so overall there's a vibe of everyone's chill on everything, both in terms of markets and economic forecasts,.