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This week brings a relatively rare economic constellation: March's US payrolls print lands on a public holiday, creating a small tear in the time-space continuum. Treasuries will trade just half a day, while the US equity market is shut.
The non-farm payrolls print completes a trifecta of labor market data this week, and the stakes are high. Job openings fell below 10 million for the first time since 2021, while just 145,000 private payrolls were added last month, according to the ADP Research Institute — below all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists.
The NFP figures take on an added importance given Friday's print marks a full year of payrolls reports since the Federal Reserve's liftoff hike last March. While signs of tightening have cropped up across the economy — for instance, in the banking system and the housing market — the American workforce has been remarkably resilient.
Friday's numbers aren't expected to show any signs of a slowdown. Consensus says that the US added 235,000 jobs in March, with the unemployment rate expected to stay put at a historically low 3.5%.
The fun part will be watching how incredibly thin markets digest the data. Liquidity is already an issue in the Treasury market — now add holiday trading conditions.
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