Economy
As FOMC Holds Rates Steady, Views Remain Strong on Jobs Ahead of Friday's Labor Report
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Despite the Federal Reserve keeping its target fed funds rate on hold at a target range of 0.75% to 1.00%, all eyes are waiting for Friday’s key employment report from the Labor Department. Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve did offer a signal of employment trends and their message is that a gradual rise in fed funds remains appropriate. No changes were made regarding the statements around the future of the Fed’s $4+ trillion balance sheet, while maintaining that Fed Funds will remain below historical norms.
24/7 Wall St. wanted to focus just on the employment aspects of the Fed’s statement and wanted to show that here have been some lower growth trends just in the last few days around employment.
The FOMC did issue a statement and data pertaining to jobs and employment have been highlighted below:
Elsewhere this week, other key employment data were shown below.
ADP’s private sector payrolls report showed a gain of 177,000 jobs in April. This was right in-line with the Bloomberg consensus estimate of 170,000 when you consider its Econoday range was 125,000 to 230,000.
ADP’s prior report covering March was revised lower to 255,000. As a reminder, the preliminary report of 263,000 had been much more positive than the actual BLS report that was released two days later.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) gave two different views on the strength for employment trends this week. Monday’s report showed the manufacturing sector and Wednesday’s report showed the non-manufacturing sector’s employment trends:
These are the views ahead for Friday’s key Labor Department report versus past reports:
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