Global Economy Week Ahead: U.S. Jobs and Inflation, Europe GDP
01 May 2017 - 5:29AM
Dow Jones News
By WSJ Staff
This week, the Federal Reserve will convene for a two-day
meeting to set monetary policy, and numbers on the European
economy's growth rate and the U.S. jobs market will be
released.
MONDAY: The Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation,
the personal-consumption expenditures price index, is expected to
show little change in consumer costs in March. Economists surveyed
by The Wall Street Journal predict the U.S. Commerce Department
will report flat core PCE prices on a monthly basis, after a 0.2%
increase in February. The overall PCE index in February was up 2.1%
from a year earlier, exceeding the Fed's target for a 2% annual
gain for the first time in nearly five years.
WEDNESDAY: The Fed's interest-rate-setting Federal Open Market
Committee isn't expected to change monetary policy when it
concludes its two-day meeting, although uncertainty about the
prospect of a June rate rise lingers. Several Fed officials have
indicated they expect to lift rates around two more times this
year. Friday's weak gross domestic product report, which showed the
U.S. economy grew at a 0.7% annual rate, likely won't be enough to
prevent the Fed from raising rates in June.
Figures to be released by the European Union's statistics agency
are expected to show eurozone GDP grew at a quarter-to-quarter rate
of 0.5% in the first three months of the year. That would be a
slightly faster rate of growth than has been typical of the
eurozone's recovery since mid-2013, and would mean the currency
area outpaced both the U.S. and the U.K. In the fourth quarter,
seasonally adjusted GDP rose by 1.7% in the euro area compared with
the same quarter the previous year.
THURSDAY: Bank of Canada Gov. Stephen Poloz will deliver a
speech in Mexico City at an event sponsored by a Mexican-Canadian
business group, CanCham Mexico. His speech comes as the Trump
administration hopes to start talks on renegotiating the North
American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, with Canada and Mexico as
soon as this summer.
FRIDAY: The U.S. Labor Department releases the April jobs
report, after last month's report presented a mixed picture of the
labor market. The March report showed hiring slowed dramatically
from earlier in the year, but the unemployment rate dropped to
4.5%, the lowest level in nearly a decade. Economists surveyed by
The Wall Street Journal expect the U.S. economy added 185,000 jobs
in April, up from 98,000 the previous month.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 30, 2017 15:14 ET (19:14 GMT)
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