Looking Ahead To Today's Noisy Non-Farm Payroll Number

Here is what Wall Street expects will be announced at 8:30 am Eastern today:

And while as usual the actual number will be largely meaningless, and is merely an indication of our headline chasing nature since as the BLS itself says the error interval is +/- 100,000, a few hnndred purely statistical jobs will make or break the market and send it soaring on either "virtuous circle" expectations, or on NEW QE coming back with a bang.

Here is the broad consensus, as summarized by RanSquawk:

Unemployment Rate M/M (Apr) Exp. 8.2% (Prev. 8.2%, Feb 8.3%)
 
In terms of recent data, Wednesday’s ADP employment change was a sharp miss on the street estimates, however, the correlation over the last twelve months has seen ADP outperform NFP on six occasions and underperform on six, offering little correlation. The latest Initial Jobless Claims showed the biggest drop since May 2011 yesterday; however the trend for the past month has seen consistent figures averaging 379K, a large increase on the previous month’s average of 354K. The employment constituents for Philadelphia Fed and Empire manufacturing were both stronger than last month’s data and the ISM Manufacturing constituent was the highest since June 2011, although the ISM Non-Manufacturing employment constituent was slightly down on February’s data. The potential influence of warmer winter weather on the Q1 employment figures saw a strong start to the year, it is widely expected for the impact of warmer weather on the data to decline in the coming months.
 
The current consensus range (+89-210K) for today’s report is somewhat wider than last month, with the bulk of estimates lying between +150-175K; overall NFP for April is expected to register a slender improvement on March’s figure, eyes will also be fixed on revisions to last month’s figures. The unemployment rate is widely expected to be in-line at 8.2% (range 8.1%-8.3%), with an even balance from analysts expecting a decrease or increase of 0.1% on the headline data. A large decline in the unemployment rate is unlikely as analysts are widely expecting the labour participation rate to stabilise during the next few months after the large declines seen at the end of 2011.
 
In terms of market reaction a reading below 120K and any downward revisions to March’s figure, will likely be seized upon by market bears and consequently a move higher in T-Notes.  Any fast money move lower in equities could be retraced as a disappointing reading could lead to speculation the Fed may conduct further easing following comments from the FOMC that further stimulus would only be required if there is a decline in the economy. A reading over 200K would give cheer to investors that the US labour market will continue to improve in 2012 and could see an initial spike to the upside in the equity markets following the release