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Gearing Up for Jobs Week: What to Expect

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Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Considering we have no major economic or Q2 earnings reports out ahead of today’s holiday-shortened week, it has the capacity to be quite impactful to the stock market. That’s because this is also Jobs Week, where all the major monthly (and weekly) employment reports hit the tape between now and Friday morning.

Due to the Monday holiday, we’re also seeing these reports pushed back a day for Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) and private-sector payrolls from Automatic Data Processing (ADP - Free Report) to Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. The JOLTS numbers reflect July’s employment numbers and ADP’s are for August.

Also on Thursday, as most Thursdays throughout the course of the year, Weekly Jobless Claims will hit the tape. These have been a marvel of consistency over the past few months: after ramping up rather quickly to +150K new jobless claims back in early June, we’ve settled around 230K today. Longer-term claims have been at or over +1.94 million for 12 straight weeks without once touching the psychologically significant 2 million longer-term claims.

The big labor market report, as it is every Jobs Week, is the known as the Employment Situation, released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Friday will mark the first Employment Situation report since the firing of the head of BLS by President Trump following the most recent report’s release. Expectations are not for big improvements month over month: +75K new jobs having been filled, versus +73K reported a month ago.

This is, incidentally, exactly the estimate for this week’s ADP tally: +75K. Numbers at these levels would represent a deficit considering the number of Baby Boomers and now older GenX retiring from the workforce per month. Even still, these would be better than we saw in May or June, which only reached +33K combined.

These lower jobs numbers are the main reason the Fed is looking to cut interest rates in another couple weeks. Even a surprise to the upside — say, to 110K new jobs filled last month — would not be enough to change the Fed’s plans to cut rates. Thus, a weaker Jobs Week would not be the worst news we could receive between now and Friday.

What to Expect from the Stock Market Today


After the opening bell this morning, S&P Manufacturing PMI and ISM Manufacturing reports — both for August — will come out. On the S&P side, 53.3 is the level expected — in-line with the month-ago number — and above the 50 level, which determines growth from loss. ISM Manufacturing is expected to climb to +48.5% from +48.0% reported a month ago, but still beneath that 50 threshold.

Pre-market futures are sinking at this hour, taking major indexes below trading levels five workdays ago. The 30-year bond yield has surged to +4.99% this morning — the highest it’s been since crossing over the +5% threshold back in July, with the 10-year back up to +4.30% and the 2-year +3.67%. Much of the current U.S. tariff policy has been declared illegal by a high court. Paying back the tariff gains is not a specter any U.S. investor would care to acknowledge at this point.

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