NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Friday's October jobs report will be different in one important manner from those of the last few months: it will be simply an economic report, not the jumping off point for a political debate.
But in one other manner, it's likely to be similar to other reports since June. Economists are forecasting it will show modest, or weaker, growth in jobs.
The pre-election reports showing disappointing levels of job growth provided challenger John Kerry and his economic advisors with ammunition in their unsuccessful campaign to unseat President Bush.
Now, with the election in the rear view mirror, political economist Greg Valliere said that the debate about the economy will retreat into the world of economists and investors, rather than politicians.
"Bush is going to get a post-election free pass on virtually all economic issues for the next few months," said Valliere, chief strategist of Charles Schwab Washington Research. Instead, people will look at the employment report for clues as to what it means for the Federal Reserve's policy of measured interest rate hikes. But even there, he said, the impact will be limited.
"I don't think that even a disappointing number on Friday would be sufficient to deter the Fed from moving next week," he said.
U.S. employers are expected to add 169,000 non-farm jobs to payrolls in the report, according to economists surveyed by Reuters. The unemployment rate is expected to stay unchanged at 5.4 percent. Job growth of about 150,000 to 155,000 is needed to keep up with the population growth, according to many economists' estimates.
The closely watched U.S. payroll number would be up from the 96,000 jobs added in September. It would also be the best report since a three-month string of strong jobs reports ended in May with a 208,000 job gain.
Economists' forecasts range from Argus Research's estimate of only an 85,000 job gain to Citigroup's forecast of a 325,000 job increase.
Steven Wieting, senior economist at Citigroup, said part of his firm's strong jobs forecast is due to technical factors as well as playing catch-up from impact of hurricanes in September.
"September was a month where we thought there was a tremendous amount of weather impact," he said. But Wieting thinks the outlook for job growth going forward from October is much weaker, probably close to the more modest 150,000 monthly gain.
"The underlying case for improvement in labor markets has probably slowed," he said. "The underlying drivers of employment growth are still positive but slowing down. We have expectation of a pretty big hit from energy costs in the winter months."
Some other economists are turning more bearish in their view of the labor market. Wachovia Securities -- which earlier this year was projecting monthly jobs growth of about 200,000 for the foreseeable future -- has now lowered its forecast for October, only a 110,000 job gain.
"After a couple of months of overestimating, we redid our modeling. We hope this more accurately captures what's going on in the market place," said Wachovia economist Jason Schenker.
Schenker thinks energy costs are having only an indirect impact on hiring -- reducing some companies' sales and thus their ability to add staff. But rising healthcare and insurance costs are becoming a strong disincentive to add staff, he said, and productivity gains continue to limit the need to add employees.
"There has been a change in employment growth outlook longer term," he said. "We're looking at more stable employment levels where employers don't add or cut staff as much as they used to."
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