Another month ends, a new month starts which means another test for the health of the US economy and investor confidence with May jobs data released Friday.
Globally there’s also the mid-week final reports on manufacturing and service sector activity for May – the early reports for the US, Europe, Japan and some other economies showed clear signs of a slowing, especially in demand.
The two reports for China midweek will be better than some had expected a week or so ago, but they will still be gloomy and indicate a slide in GDP this quarter.
In Australia there’s the March quarter national accounts and GDP – historical for certain but still a base to judge the rest of the year from, especially with inflation and rising interest rates still front of mind here.
And there’s also the usual start of month data.
The US jobs report Friday night will feed into the US Federal Reserve meeting later this month (June 14, 15)
Economists expect to see a gain of around 330,000 new jobs and a fall in the unemployment rate to 3.5% and wages growth slowing slightly to an annual 5.2% (from 5.3%) growth rate. Watch again for any revisions of data for the previous three months.
In other US data, house prices, and consumer confidence are both out Tuesday and the manufacturing and services activity surveys are out Wednesday and Thursday respectively.
There’s also the car sales figures – watch for details of a rise in sales of electric vehicles in the US. But will Tesla release figures for the month for the US and its Shanghai factory and deliveries?
There’s only a smattering of results due in the US – Salesforce Inc, HP and Hormel (the maker of Spam) are down to release their figures.
The Bank of Canada on Thursday is likely to raise its official cash rate by another 0.5% taking it to 1% – following the leads of the Fed and the Reserve Bank of NZ in raising rate sby half a per cent.
Eurozone confidence data for May is due out later today, along with inflation figures for May on Tuesday while Wednesday sees the release of unemployment which the AMP’s Shane Oliver says is likely to remain at 6.8%.
He also said that China’s business conditions surveys for May (due Tuesday and Wednesday) “are expected to improve a bit but remain weak reflecting Covid restrictions.”
Australia sees the GDP data on Wednesday for the march quarter and tomorrow the release of the current account figures for the same quarter, government finance statistics and business indicators (including the much-watched inventories).
There’s also building approvals, housing finance figures, trade data for April and house prices for May.
