Week Ahead: What to Watch in December Jobs Data
Is a tighter labor market forcing employers to boost pay? Also on tap: ISM data, auto sales, and Monsanto and Walgreens earnings.
Is a tighter labor market forcing employers to boost pay? Also on tap: ISM data, auto sales, and Monsanto and Walgreens earnings.
For Morningstar, I'm Jeremy Glaser. Welcome to The Week Ahead, our quick take on what investors should have on their radar screens for the week starting Jan. 4.
There is a fair amount of data on tap to start off 2016.
The marquee report will be Friday's jobs data. We'll be looking to see if the strong jobs numbers we've seen in recent months continue into December. Wage data will also be eyed, and we'll see if a tighter labor market is forcing employers to boost pay.
The ISM index, which gives a snapshot of the strength of the manufacturing economy, is due on Monday. This series fell into contractionary territory last month, as low energy prices and a strong dollar continue to weigh.
Auto sales have been very strong in recent months, and we'll see if that trend continued in December on Tuesday.
It will be quiet week on the earnings front. Two that we will be watching include Monsanto on Wednesday and Walgreens on Thursday.
Monsanto has been facing near-term headwinds from a strong dollar and elevated costs, and we'll be looking for signs that these challenges are diminishing.
Walgreens has had a series of mixed to poor results recently, as it continues to grapple with management turnover and broader pricing issues impacting retail pharmacies. It seems unlikely that these problems will dissipate by this quarter, as the firm's strategy to gain more scale through actions like buying Rite Aid will take time to develop.
Stay tuned to Morningstar for our take on all of these stories throughout the week.
Transparency is how we protect the integrity of our work and keep empowering investors to achieve their goals and dreams. And we have unwavering standards for how we keep that integrity intact, from our research and data to our policies on content and your personal data.
We’d like to share more about how we work and what drives our day-to-day business.
We sell different types of products and services to both investment professionals
and individual investors. These products and services are usually sold through
license agreements or subscriptions. Our investment management business generates
asset-based fees, which are calculated as a percentage of assets under management.
We also sell both admissions and sponsorship packages for our investment conferences
and advertising on our websites and newsletters.
How we use your information depends on the product and service that you use and your relationship with us. We may use it to:
To learn more about how we handle and protect your data, visit our privacy center.
Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investor’s point of view. We also respect individual opinions––they represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive.
To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.
Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.