Employment Situation
The big news of the week will be the June’s Employment report at 8:30 AM ET Friday. This highly important report will tell us June's unemployment rate, number of new payrolls added or lost and some earnings figures. These are considered to be extremely important readings of the employment sector and can have a huge impact on the financial markets. The ideal scenario for the bond market is rising unemployment, a large decline in payrolls and no change in earnings. Weaker than expected readings would likely help boost bond prices and lower mortgage rates Friday. However, stronger numbers could be extremely detrimental to mortgage pricing. Analysts are expecting to see the unemployment rate hold at 3.6% and 260,000 jobs added to the economy last month, while earnings rose 0.3%. A higher unemployment rate, fewer new jobs and a smaller increase in earnings would be considered favorable news for rates.