WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – As all the cable talkers will tell us, the upcoming jobs report (Friday) will be watched closely for clues to future Federal Reserve policy and as a gauge of the extent of retreat of the pandemic.
But not really. As Fed Chair Jay Powell keeps insisting to a skeptical set of markets, the unemployment report is only one measure of the true extent of joblessness. If February’s unemployment rate improves a tenth or two, so what?
Thursday’s weekly report on initial jobless benefit claims was hailed as showing the fewest layoffs since the start of the pandemic. Claims did fall under 700,000 for the first time since the March 14 week of last year but that was the week there was a break in the series. The world changed in March a year ago so that the March 14 week had 282,000 claims and the next week 3,307,000. So it was the best claims report before everything fell off a cliff.
Any improvement Friday – and some is expected – will be at the margin, against a base of unemployment that measured by claims in the March 6 week, totaled 18,952,795. Powell keeps repeating at every opportunity, as do his Fed colleagues, that reemployment of those people, particularly those stuck at the periphery of the work force, is the goal described as full employment.
He might use a different term, deep employment versus those counted in the monthly jobs report, those in shallow unemployment, who are still looking for work The improvement has to seep into the crannies and crevasses of unemployment where you find those who have stopped looking and that won’t be accomplished this year.
The ADP/Moody’s Analytics estimate of private payrolls arrives Wednesday morning, a new claims report is on Thursday and then the March jobs report..
The ISM survey of manufacturing momentum is on Thursday, a quarter hour after the Markit measure. The entire list of the upcoming week’s data points is below:
Upcoming US Economic Data and Federal Reserve Events
Monday, March 29 – 10:30a ET March Dallas Fed Mfg Survey (12.3 expected)
Monday, March 29 – 11a Fed Gov Waller at Peterson Inst
Tuesday, March 30 – 7a ET Redbook wkly same-store retail sales (+11% expected)
Tuesday, March 30 – 9a ET Case-Shiller 20-city home price index
Tuesday, March 30 – 9a Fed Vice Chair Quarles at Peterson Inst
Tuesday, March 30 – 10a – Conf Board March consumer confidence (95 expected)
Wednesday, March 31 – 7a US MBA wkly mortgage applications
Wednesday, March 31 – 8:15a ADP/Moody’s Analytics Private Mar payrolls
Wednesday, March 31 – 9:45a Chicago PMI (60.5 expected)
Wednesday, March 31 – 10a US NAR pending home sales
Wednesday, March 31 – 10:30a US EIA oil stocks
Thursday, April 1 – 8:30a Initial jobless benefit claims
Thursday, April 1 – 9:45a US Markit manufacturing PMI
Thursday, April 1 – 10a ISM manufacturing PMI (60.5 expected)
Thursday, April 1 – 10a US Feb construction spending
Friday, April 2 – 8:30a US jobs report (525K payrolls, 6.0% unemp rate expected)
Friday, April 2 – 11a – Atl Fed’s Bostic speaks at NBER
Separately, Extract Analytics view of the upcoming week’s SPX:
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Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com.
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