by Calculated Risk on 3/30/2024 08:11:00 AM

The key report scheduled for this week is the March employment report on Friday.

Other key reports include the February Trade Deficit and March Auto Sales.

For manufacturing, the March ISM Manufacturing survey will be released.

----- Monday, April 1st -----
10:00 AM: ISM Manufacturing Index for March. The consensus is for the ISM to be at 48.5, up from 47.8 in February.  

10:00 AM: Construction Spending for February. The consensus is for 0.5% increase in construction spending.

----- Tuesday, April 2nd -----
8:00 AM: Corelogic House Price index for February.

10:00 AM ET: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for February from the BLS.

This graph shows job openings (black line), hires (dark blue), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS.

Jobs openings decreased slightly in January to 8.86 million from 8.89 million in December.

The number of job openings (black) were down 15% year-over-year. Quits were down 13% year-over-year.

All Day: Light vehicle sales for March. The consensus is for light vehicle sales to be 15.9 million SAAR in March, up from 15.8 million in February (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate).

This graph shows light vehicle sales since the BEA started keeping data in 1967. The dashed line is the February sales rate.

----- Wednesday, April 3rd -----
7:00 AM ET: The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.

8:15 AM: The ADP Employment Report for March. This report is for private payrolls only (no government). The consensus is for 155,000 payroll jobs added in March, up from 140,000 added in February.

10:00 AM: the ISM Services Index for March.

----- Thursday, April 4th -----
8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released.  The consensus is for 208 thousand initial claims, down from 210 thousand last week.

8:30 AM: Trade Balance report for February from the Census Bureau.

This graph shows the U.S. trade deficit, with and without petroleum, through the most recent report. The blue line is the total deficit, and the black line is the petroleum deficit, and the red line is the trade deficit ex-petroleum products.

The consensus is the trade deficit to be $66.5 billion.  The U.S. trade deficit was at $67.4 billion in January.

----- Friday, April 5th -----
8:30 AM: Employment Report for March.   The consensus is for 200,000 jobs added, and for the unemployment rate to be unchanged at 3.9%.

There were 275,000 jobs added in February, and the unemployment rate was at 3.9%.

This graph shows the jobs added per month since January 2021.