The consensus is 175,000 jobs added in February, and the unemployment rate went down by 0.1% to 3.9%. ADP February employment report released earlier this week stated 183,000 private jobs were added, therefore the NFP consensus will likely be met or exceeded.
The consensus for January housing starts is 1.170 million units annualized rate and 1.287 million housing permits. In recent months, home sales figures and home price increases have been pointing to a slowdown and most likely the housing starts numbers will be disappointed. The reason why the housing starts play such an important role in the US economy is because most of the durable goods purchases stem from housing; i.e. furniture and major appliance purchases.
If one of these reports fails to meet or exceed the consensus numbers, the market will likely continue to pull back and probably with more vigorous. The daily price chart of the SP500 index shows it has started to pull back since the beginning of March, and any disappointments from these reports could cause the market to drop 4.75% from the February close to the level near 2675.
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