by Calculated Risk on 1/06/2018 08:01:00 AM

The key economic reports this week are December retail sales and the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

----- Monday, Jan 8th -----
3:00 PM: Consumer Credit from the Federal Reserve. The consensus is for consumer credit to increase $18.0 billion in November.

----- Tuesday, Jan 2nd -----
6:00 AM ET: NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for December.

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

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

Jobs openings decreased in October to 5.996 million from 6.177 in September.

The number of job openings (yellow) were up 7.3% year-over-year, and Quits were up 3.3% year-over-year.

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

----- Thursday, Jan 4th -----
8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for 245 thousand initial claims, down from 250 thousand the previous week.

8:30 AM: The Producer Price Index for December from the BLS. The consensus is a 0.2% increase in PPI, and a 0.2% increase in core PPI.

----- Friday, Jan 5th -----
8:30 AM ET: Retail sales for December will be released.  The consensus is for a 0.5% increase in retail sales.

This graph shows the year-over-year change in retail sales and food service (ex-gasoline) since 1993. Retail and Food service sales, ex-gasoline, increased by 5.0% on a YoY basis in November.

8:30 AM: The Consumer Price Index for December from the BLS. The consensus is for a 0.1% increase in CPI, and a 0.2% increase in core CPI.

10:00 AM: Manufacturing and Trade: Inventories and Sales (business inventories) report for November.  The consensus is for a 0.3% increase in inventories.