Jobs data will highlight this week’s economic calendar.
Investors will be looking for continued signs of a cooling employment market and slowing growth, which would suggest inflation is waning and possibly buoy risk-on asset markets, although cryptos have been largely immune from significant macroeconomic events. Hot jobs data, which typically accompanies rising prices, has been a particular concern for the U.S. central bank, which raised the interest rate 25 basis points (bps) last Wednesday.
Recent productivity and consumer spending reports have been more encouraging. Friday’s 3% Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) was lower than expectations and down from 6.8% a year ago.
Among other releases, the Labor Department and Institute for Supply Management (ISM) will announce June job openings and labor turnover (JOLTS) and manufacturing index (PMI), respectively on Tuesday; ADP will report on private sector jobs on Wednesday and the Labor Department will present initial jobless claims and on Thursday. The same day, Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) report their latest earnings.
May’s 9.8 million job openings was a decline from the 10.3 million openings in April, but not as much as some jobs observers had hoped. The ISM median forecast is for a slight uptick in manufacturing activity from 46% in June to 46.9%. The increase would be the first after seven consecutive monthly declines.
Payroll processing firm ADP’s monthly reports on private sector jobs are a key indicator of the state of the employment market. The July report is expected to show an increase of 173,000 jobs, down from June’s unexpectedly high 497,000 jobs, which was more than double estimates and offered perhaps the most compelling reason for the U.S. central bank to boost the interest rate.
Jobless Claims, Non-Farm Payrolls
First-time jobless claims have disappointed employment observers looking for signs of a weakening job market this month. They have fallen every week in July with the 221,000 for the week ending July 22 falling about 7,000 short of the previous week’s total.
The consensus for the week ending July 29 is for a slight rise to $227,000.
Amazon, Apple Report Earnings
Encouraging earnings by a number of tech firms buoyed major equity indexes. This week, investors will get to gnaw on the latest quarterly results from Amazon and Apple on Thursday, although cryptos have decoupled increasingly from tech stocks.
Edited by James Rubin.
