Bankrate.com expert Mark Hamrick talks numbers with Les Sinclair on the August jobs report..

He recently surveyed more than two dozen leading economists (including two former regional Fed presidents) and found:

• The unemployment rate will drop from 6.2% to 5.7% over the next year and wage growth is widely expected to accelerate, according to the economists.

• They see payrolls expanding by a monthly average of nearly 219,000 jobs over the next 12 months. That’s slightly above the pace seen over the past year and in July, when payrolls surged by 209,000 jobs.

• The bad news is that labor force participation – already at the lowest level in decades – isn’t expected to improve much, if at all, over the next year.

• The Fed’s first interest rate hike is predicted for June 2015. A slight majority of economists agree with how the Fed is handling interest rates. Almost half, however, think the Fed is keeping rates too low for too long and risking future inflation.

• GDP growth over the next year is expected to be around 3%.