Economists expect jobs heated up in March thaw

The snow and ice have finally melted. Does that mean the job market heated back up in March? Will stock investors view the latest jobs number in a sunny, bullish way, or a cloudy, bearish way?

For the answers, tune into the government's closely watched non-farm payroll report, set for release Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Then catch the open of trading on Wall Street an hour later.

Based on the median forecast from an Action Economics survey, Wall Street is looking for 195,000 new non-farm jobs in March and the unemployment rate to tick down to 6.6%, from 6.7%. "We expect positive effects from more normal weather to push payroll growth stronger, given that temperature and precipitation patterns across the country normalized further in March," Cooper Howes of Barclays told clients in a report.

If the jobs number tops expectations, investors will be closely watching to see if good (economic) news is good news for stocks.

But a super-strong number might be less market-friendly, as it might put additional pressure on the Federal Reserve, which under new Chair Janet Yellen has said it will base its policy decisions on more qualitative aspects of the labor market.

If 200,000-plus jobs are created and the unemployment rate comes down, the number of long-term unemployed shrinks, and more part-time workers land full-time jobs, the Fed might have to move sooner next year to hike interest rates, which would be bearish. But that's an awful lot of "ifs."