Markets Await JOLTS Report
We begin a new holiday-shortened trading week (we’ll observe Independence Day this year on Friday, July 3rd, which will make for a nice three-day weekend) looking at jobs numbers from last week, last month and before. We call it “Jobs Week” in this column — each month we’re treated to quality updates of the domestic labor market. Of late, these figures appear to be improving from the doldrums of last year around this time.
Oil prices are back down to pre-Iran war lows, $70 per barrel (/bbl) on WTI and $72/bbl on Brent crude, despite renewed fighting over the weekend as both the U.S. and Iran try to hang onto the peace agreement -- or Memorandum of Understanding -- that aim to bring hostilities to an end between the two countries. This is proving to be a marathon, not a print, so it behooves us to keep an eye on developments throughout every trading week in current conditions.
Jobs Report Releases Throughout This Week
Starting Tuesday, we’ll see the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report one month in arrears from other employment data: May. Following the highest levels since November 2024 last month at 7.6 million, expectations are for this to go a smidge higher, to 7.7 million. Professional & Business Services had a huge month in job openings last time around, +668K, and every region gained except for the Midwest, which trimmed openings by -11K.
Wednesday brings us private-sector payrolls from Automatic Data Processing (ADP) for June, and here we’re also coming off the highest levels of the year: +122K for May. We expect this to roll back somewhat, to +110K, but this would still provide the first cluster of +100K private-sector jobs for three straight months since November ’24 through January ’25. March through June of last year brought us four-straight negative private sector jobs numbers, so we’re clearly up off the mat in this regard.
On Thursday, the final day of trading for the week with Friday off, we expect both the normal Weekly Jobless Claims reports and non-farm payrolls from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This is the Big Kahuna of monthly labor data, including a Household Survey that brings us a fresh Unemployment Rate, which is projected to remain steady at an historically healthy +4.3%.
Headline BLS for June is expected to come down to 118K from 172K reported a month ago. This would bring us the second-straight lower monthly jobs tally, but three-straight above +100K for the first time in more than two years. Wages are expected to have grown steadily, +0.3% month over month and +3.5% year over year. We’ve come a long way from the February dive of -159K jobs, which was the worse labor force performance since the Covid pandemic.
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