Schedule for Week of May 3, 2015

The key report this week is the April employment report on Friday.

Other key indicators include the March Trade Deficit on Tuesday, and the April ISM non-manufacturing index also on Tuesday.

----- Monday, May 4th -----
Early: the Black Knight March Mortgage Monitor report. This is a monthly report of mortgage delinquencies and other mortgage data.

10:00 AM: Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories and Orders (Factory Orders) for March. The consensus is a 2.1% increase in orders.

2:00 PM ET: the April 2015 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices from the Federal Reserve.

----- Tuesday, May 5th -----
8:30 AM: Trade Balance report for March from the Census Bureau.

This graph shows the U.S. trade deficit, with and without petroleum, through February. The blue line is the total deficit, and the black line is the petroleum deficit, and the red line is the trade deficit ex-petroleum products.

The consensus is for the U.S. trade deficit to be at $42.0 billion in March from $35.4 billion in February. Note: The trade deficit probably increased sharply in March after the West Coast port slowdown was resolved in February. It seems likely the deficit will be larger than the "consensus" forecast.

10:00 AM: the ISM non-Manufacturing Index for April. The consensus is for index to decrease to 56.2 from 56.5 in March.

----- Wednesday, May 6th -----
7:00 AM: The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.

8:15 AM: The ADP Employment Report for April. This report is for private payrolls only (no government). The consensus is for 205,000 payroll jobs added in April, up from 189,000 in March.

9:15 AM: Speech by Fed Chair Janet Yellen, Finance and Society, At the Institute for New Economic Thinking Conference on Finance and Society, Washington, D.C.

----- Thursday, May 7th -----
8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for claims to increase to 285 thousand from 262 thousand.

3:00 PM: Consumer Credit for March from the Federal Reserve. The consensus is for an increase of $16.0 billion in credit.

----- Friday, May 8th -----
8:30 AM: Employment Report for April. The consensus is for an increase of 220,000 non-farm payroll jobs added in April, up from the 126,000 non-farm payroll jobs added in March.

The consensus is for the unemployment rate to decline to 5.4%.

This graph shows the year-over-year change in total non-farm employment since 1968.

In March, the year-over-year change was 3.1 million jobs.

As always, a key will be the change in real wages - and as the unemployment rate falls, wage growth should pickup.