Why follow employment Friday and other key jobs releases?
Why follow employment Friday and other key jobs releases? (Part 1 of 6)
Key employment releases
Last week saw a number of important employment indicator releases. Besides the highlight, and most awaited of all being the Employment Situation Summary Report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (or BLS) that’s released every first Friday of the month, other key job reports and indicator releases included the following.
The ADP national employment report, a monthly stage-setter for the BLS employment situation summary report, was released on Wednesday, April 2, by Automatic Data Processing (or ADP) in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics.
The Gallup U.S. job creation index, released monthly by Gallup, came out on Wednesday, April 2.
An update on the change in jobless claims marked its release on Thursday, April 2. This report is published weekly by the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Challenger job cut report, a monthly release by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., came out on Thursday, April 3.
The Gallup U.S. payroll-to-population report, another monthly release by Gallup, came out on Thursday, April 3.
The week concluded with the BLS employment situation summary report coming out on Friday, April 4.
These releases provide guidance on the course of the economy, and they’re crucial to understanding the financial health of the economy.
Industrial companies, as major contributors to the job market, are greatly affected by employment statistics releases. The performance of industrials ETFs like the SPDR Industrial Select Sector Fund (XLI), which has companies like General Electric Co. (GE) and Boeing Co. (BA) in its portfolio, the Vanguard Industrials Index Fund (VIS), and the iShares Dow Jones US Industrial Sector Index Fund (IYJ) serve as a good indicator of the industrial sector.
While we’ve already covered the details of the ADP employment report and the BLS employment report in previous series, we’ll tell you more about other key job releases that shared the spotlight with them.
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