U.S. Treasury yields were little changed on Friday morning, ahead of the release of August’s jobs report.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was flat, trading near 1.294% at 7:40 a.m. ET. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond edged lower less than a basis point to 1.905%. Yields move inversely to prices and 1 basis point is equal to 0.01%.
The August nonfarm payrolls report is due to be released at 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday.
Economists polled by Dow Jones expect 720,000 jobs were added in the month, down from 943,000 jobs added in July. The unemployment rate is expected to dip to 5.2%, compared to 5.4% in July.
Investors will be looking at the data closely, given the recovery in the U.S. labor market is being used by the Federal Reserve to gauge when it should tighten monetary policy.
Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius said in a note that he expects the report to show an addition of just 500,000 jobs but that a miss doesn’t necessarily change the Fed’s timeline.
“While we expect a nonfarm payroll miss relative to consensus, we believe a slowdown of this magnitude would still be consistent with a November taper announcement from the Fed, barring other large downside surprises,” Hatzius said.
The release of the highly anticipated jobs report follows better-than-expected jobless claims data, which came out on Thursday. The Labor Department reported that 340,000 jobless claims were filed during the week ended Aug. 28, versus the 345,000 estimate.
However, ADP’s monthly employment change report, released Wednesday, showed that private payrolls rose just 374,000 in August. While this was above the 326,000 jobs added in July, it was well below the Dow Jones estimate of 600,000 new payrolls.
In terms of other economic data due out on Friday, Markit is set to release its final purchasing managers’ index reading for August at 9:45 a.m. ET. ISM is then due to release its non-manufacturing PMI for August at 10 a.m. ET.
There are no auctions scheduled to be held on Friday.
— CNBC’s Maggie Fitzgerald contributed to this market report.
