The Bureau of Labor Statistics will add another round of data to this week’s mixed readings on the job market as investors remain fixated on movements in Treasury yields amid renewed inflation concerns.
The BLS will publish its estimate of new applications for jobless benefits for the week ending on September 30 at 8:30 am Eastern time, with economists looking for only a modest uptick from prior levels to around 210,000 .
Last week, the BLS reported only 204,000 new applications, the lowest level in nearly eight months, in a reading that added to wage-lead inflation concerns in the tight U.S. labor market.
Data this week, however, has been mixed, with the BLS’s Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better-known as JOLTs, rising to 9.6 billion over the month of August, and payroll processing group ADP’s National Employment Report for the month of September showing a notable pullback in private-sector hiring.
The BLS will publish its official September employment report on Friday, with analysts expecting the economy to add 168,000 new jobs over the month as wages rise modestly from August and the headline unemployment rate slips to 3.7%.
Both today’s weekly claims and Friday’s non-farm payroll report will play a crucial role in defining the market’s near-term inflation forecasts, which, alongside hawkish Federal Reserve signaling, have lifted Treasury bond yields to fresh 2007 highs and accelerated bets on an end-of-year rate hike.
Benchmark 10-year note yields, which traded as high as 4.832% earlier this week, were last seen changing hands at 4.742% in overnight dealing, while 2-year notes were pegged at 5.048%.
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