Markets are roughly flat Friday morning ahead of the widely anticipated employment report for August, which at 8:30 eastern time is set to show that jobs declined for the third straight month.

Ninety minutes before the opening bell, the S&P 500 is down 0.75 to 1,089.00. The 10 year Treasury note is -0-07 at 99-25 yielding 2.65% (+2.5bps) and the October deliver FNCL 4.0 is -0-02 at 102-22. 

The employment report is anticipated to show that 100,000 jobs were lost last month, though the decline relates to disappearing Census jobs rather than another dip. Still, private payrolls should increase a modest 41,000, according to economists polled by Reuters, and manufacturing jobs should be up by 10,000.

“Unfortunately, whatever we see privately probably gets fully offset by other public sector job losses,” said economists at BMO Capital Markets. “State and local government financial problems likely mean more layoffs on that front.”

That weakness is expected to push the unemployment rate up one-tenth to 9.6%. 

At 10:00, focus will shift to the ISM Non-Manufacturing Report, a nationwide look at the services, financial, and construction sectors. Markets expect the report to continue in growth mode in August but slow down to 53.5 from 54.3 a month before.

“Employment market conditions deteriorated, and we expect the survey's employment index to drop,” said forecasters at IHS Global Insight. “Also, freight volumes declined in the past few weeks, reflecting the fact that overall activity is in the process of slowing down. Partly offsetting these trends, travel and tourism services appear to be holding up well.”

 Also at 10:00, Atlanta Federal Reserve President Dennis Lockhart speaks on regional and national economies at East Tennessee State University.