The firm estimates non-farm payrolls to clock in at 75k in December, beating estimates with private payrolls hitting 80k. That being said, they estimate the unemployment rate to jump up to 4.7% after having risen to 4.6% (4.56% unrounded) in November.<\/p>\n
“Just as with the last few months, we would caution that seemingly stronger job growth may be more a
\nresult of seasonal adjustment issues in a low hiring environment rather than a sustained pick-up in demand
\nfor workers. Seasonal factors imply a boost from typically low hiring in many months in Q4\/Q1.”<\/p>\n
Building on the case that payrolls would stay supported due to seasonal factors, Citi notes that:<\/p>\n
“Looking through extreme seasonal adjustment
\nissues around the Thanksgiving holiday, continuing jobless claims have been following a similar pattern as
\nlast year, declining more clearly by the end of November. This could suggest upside risk to our forecast,
\npossibly with seasonally adjusted strength in sectors like transportation and retail trade.”<\/p>\n
They also pointed to the fact that December 2024 saw a “very strong” payrolls print of 323k.<\/p>\n
As for the unemployment rate, the firm argues that:<\/p>\n
“There has been
\nsubstantial residual seasonality in the participation rate this year that would imply it rises again in
\nDecember, although usual seasonal factor updates incorporated into December data are a risk to this
\nassumption.”<\/p>\n
Adding that a key driver in their estimate stems from the anticipation that the labour force participation rate rising a bit further again from 62.47% to a rounded 62.6%.<\/p>\n
Besides that, Citi estimates average hourly earnings to be on the softer side this time around (+0.1% m\/m) in saying that:<\/p>\n
“Calendar effects that imply softer wage growth
\ncould also be one temporary factor leading to softer wage growth in December. But forward-looking wage
\nplans of businesses, which tend to lead actual wage growth trends by a few months, suggest this slowing
\nwill continue into 2026.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The firm estimates non-farm payrolls to clock in at 75k in December, beating estimates with private payrolls hitting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":{"0":"post-402347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}