Weekly Unemployment Claims (every Thursday)
Tomorrow’s only relevant data is the weekly unemployment update at 8:30 AM ET. It is expected to reveal approximately 219,000 new claims for jobless benefits were made, up from the previous week’s 217,000. A much larger number would be good news for bonds and mortgage rates because it would be a sign of weakness in the employment sector. Since this is just a weekly update instead of the traditional monthly and quarterly data it normally doesn’t have a big impact on trading or mortgage pricing. However, with so little scheduled this week, we may see a stronger than usual response to a surprise number.