Worried about the release of the July U.S. payrolls numbers on Friday? Judging from the market's reaction to last month's release, you should be. Then, economists had been expecting a loss of 365,000 jobs, and traders were hoping for a positive surprise - but when the numbers didn't co-operate, and losses came in much worse at 467,000, the S&P 500 plunged 2.9 per cent.

"Traders don't seem as optimistic about the July jobs number meeting or beating expectations as they did heading into last month's report, so hopefully this would temper the declines on another miss," said Bespoke Investment Group.

Tell that to Goldman Sachs. On Thursday, their economists upgraded their forecast, scratching out their estimate of 300,000 losses and replacing it with just 250,000 losses. The consensus is calling for losses of 328,000, meaning that Goldman Sachs is particularly upbeat.

"Incoming information on the labour market has been a mixed bag, but in our view points towards a slightly better outcome than our first estimate made about two weeks ago. In particular, information on jobless claims suggests - even after correcting for seasonal distortions related to the timing of auto sector plant shutdowns - some improvement in the state of the labour market," they said in a note to clients.

"More broadly, the economy appears to be stabilizing after the sharp declines of the fourth quarter and first quarter, and employment trends should follow this with some lag."