Schedule for Week of December 31, 2023

Happy New Year! Wishing you all the best in 2024.

The key report this week is the December employment report on Friday.

Other key indicators include the December ISM manufacturing, December vehicle sales and November Job Openings.

----- Monday, January 1st -----
The NYSE and the NASDAQ will be closed in observance of the New Year’s Day holiday

----- Tuesday, January 2nd -----
10:00 AM: Construction Spending for November. The consensus is for a 0.5% increase in construction spending.

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

10:00 AM ET: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for November 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 in October to 8.73 million from 9.35 million in September

10:00 AM: ISM Manufacturing Index for December. The consensus is for the ISM to be at 47.1, up from 46.7 in November.

2:00 PM: FOMC Minutes, Meeting of December 12-13, 2023

Late: Light vehicle sales for December.

The Wards forecast is for 15.7 million SAAR in December, up from the BEA estimate of 15.32 million SAAR in November (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate).

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

----- Thursday, January 4th -----
8:15 AM: The ADP Employment Report for December. This report is for private payrolls only (no government). The consensus is for 130,000, up from 103,000 jobs added in November.

8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released.  

----- Friday, January 5th -----
8:30 AM: Employment Report for December.   The consensus is for 158,000 jobs added, and for the unemployment rate to increase to 3.8%.

There were 199,000 jobs added in November, and the unemployment rate was at 3.7%.

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

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