Looking Ahead to a New "Jobs Week"

Monday, January 5th, 2026

At this early hour in pre-market trading, we’re mixed on major market indexes. The Dow is -46 points currently, the S&P 500 is +14, the Nasdaq +144 and the small-cap Russell 2000 +1 point. Over the past month of trading, we’re also mixed: the Dow and S&P 500 are up +1.2% and +0.55%, respectively, the Nasdaq -0.7% and Russell 2000 -0.02%.

We comb the last confetti out of our hair from holiday season and gear up for Q4 earnings, which begin next week with the big Wall Street banks like JPMorgan JPM and Citigroup C, as well as early reporting majors like Delta Air Lines DAL. At that point, we’ll begin to have sone idea how strong the U.S. economy has performed in the final quarter of 2025.
 

Biggest News of the Week: Jobs Numbers

We like to call the first full week of the month “Jobs Week,” which typically — not always, such as when we have government shutdowns — bring us monthly tallies in both private and overall non-farm employment. On Wednesday, we begin with private-sector payrolls from Automatic Data Processing ADP, which last month brought us negative -32K private-sector jobs, the worst number in nearly three years.

In fact, ADP payroll numbers have posted negative headlines in four of the last six months, averaging +10K new private-sector jobs filled per month over that time. Compare this with the previous six months’ +81K new private-sector jobs, which was no great shakes but at least covered the amount of monthly Baby Boomer retirees. Forecasts are for +45K new jobs having been created in the private sector for December.

Also on Wednesday are the November Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) numbers, which have bounced back over the previously reported two months, off summer lows around 7.2 million openings to 7.67 million in October. Job Quits sank to their lowest levels since April 2020 in October, +1.8%, signaling a level of employment insecurity among the American workforce.

On Thursday, Weekly Jobless Claims report. These have remained the outlier in labor data, with last week’s +199K diving to sub-200K for only the second time in the last two years. For a year or more we’d been supposing that older members of the workforce — the aforementioned Baby Boomers — were taking their pink slips as indications their retirements should begin immediately, but with the youngest Boomers now at traditional retirement age, we now expect these levels to be dwindling. 

Continuing Claims sank back below 1.9 million in the last report, where we had been for literally half of 2025. Taken together, these jobless claims assert a perceived strength in American labor — or at least a reluctance on the part of companies to lay off staff. This notion is countered by news reports such as 14K layoffs at Amazon AMZN and 16K at consumer goods giant Nestlé NSRGY.

Friday’s Employment Situation report is the Big Kahuna, and may provide a “tie breaker” of sorts. Combining data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), we not only see a monthly snapshot of non-farm payroll adds including government jobs, but supply us with a fresh Unemployment Rate.

Let’s start there, as the Unemployment Rate is likely to capture some headlines late this week, especially if it comes in at +4.7%, as expected. This would be the highest level of unemployment since September of 2021, when the rate was shrinking rapidly month over month. November came in at +4.6% and the previously reported rate was +4.4% in September (the government shutdown had us skip October), so we would be interested in seeing a leveling-off of this metric in this week’s report.

Non-farm payrolls are projected to come in at +54K for December — suggesting a persistent weakness in American hiring, but at least not a negative headline, which we’ve seen in three of the past six months. Any surprise to the upside would likely be welcome by the market; on the other hand, a disappointing BLS report may be a way of increasing the odds for a Fed rate cut at the end of this month.
 

What to Expect from the Stock Market Today

Much of the day’s headlines will revolve around the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and its impact on commodities, most especially crude oil. At this hour, oil prices are up, as are gold and silver — hedges against risks to stock market equities. Meanwhile, bond yields have remained somewhat sanguine, with the 10-year currently sub-4.18%.

ISM Manufacturing numbers for December come out after today’s open, expected to tick up 10 basis points (bps) to +48.3% month over month. However, this still places manufacturing data beneath the 50 level, which is the demarcation point between growth and loss. ISM Services come out Wednesday, and are expected to reach +52.1%, +10 bps month over month.

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