Monday, April 28, 2025
We have a big week ahead of us in the stock market. Not only is it a new Jobs Week — with JOLTS, private sector payrolls and a fresh Employment Situation — but we also get the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report, which is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation. And if that weren’t enough, the busiest week for Q1 earnings so far awaits us.
Jobs Week Expectations: JOLTS, ADP, Nonfarm Payrolls
Tuesday kicks off Jobs Week with
Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) results, albeit a month in arrears from the other employment reports out between now and Friday. Expectations are for a decline to 7.4 million job openings for March, down from 7.57 million reported the previous month. We’ve mostly stayed within range over the past 12 months, with the exception of September’s low 7.1 million and last April’s 8.09 million on the top side.
Private sector payrolls from
Automatic Data Processing ADP for April are out Thursday, with estimates formulating around a significantly lower 110K private-sector jobs gains, below the 155K reported the prior month. This itself was notably up from the 84K reported for February. We have seen some volatility here over the past year: +221K in October of last year, and a mere +42K reported for July of 2024.
Weekly Jobless Claims, on the other hand, have been remarkably steady — especially going back to March 1st. Analysts look for a tick-up to 226K for last week’s Initial Jobless Claims, from 222K reported last week. Continuing Claims have been recently putting in lower highs and lower lows: 1.84 million was the tally last week. Both of these metrics have been among the strongest evidence that the labor market continues to stay healthy.
Nonfarm payrolls from the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are expected to drop near three digits — from 228K reported for March to 130K for April. Perhaps the vast layoffs from the federal government’s DOGE program, among other places, will finally show up in the data. Then again, these numbers have continued to surprise to the upside of late. The Unemployment Rate and Wage Growth numbers are expected to come in-line with March levels: +4.2% and +0.3%, respectively.
PCE Looks for 30 bps Drops Across the Board
Wednesday is the final day of April this year, and that’s when we’ll see the latest PCE report hit the tape (ahead of the open). Headline month over month in anticipated to reach 0.0% from +0.3% previously, with year over year headline expected at +2.2% versus +2.5% in March. Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, core PCE month over month is forecast at +0.1%, down from +0.4% the prior month, and +2.5% year over year, below the +2.8% reported a month ago.
Q1 Earnings Roundup and Forecast
Domino’s Pizza DPZ reported Q1 earnings ahead of this week’s initial opening bell. Earnings of $4.33 per share outperformed the $4.06 in the Zacks consensus, but revenues of $1.1 billion in the quarter missed estimates by -0.79%. U.S. comps came in unexpectedly negative (-0.5%), somewhat offset by a higher-than-expected +3.7% Internationally. Shares are down -1.5% ahead of today’s open, adding to the stock’s -5% year to date. For more on DPZ’s earnings, click here.
Check out the updated Zacks Earnings Calendar here.After today’s close, we’ll see new earnings reports from
NXP Semiconductors NXPI, steel-maker
Nucor NUE and Seattle-based clouds security firm
F5 FFIV. On Wednesday of this week,
Meta META and
Microsoft MSFT report; Thursday brings us
Apple AAPL and
Amazon AMZN earnings.
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Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP): Free Stock Analysis Report Nucor Corporation (NUE): Free Stock Analysis Report Domino's Pizza Inc (DPZ): Free Stock Analysis Report F5, Inc. (FFIV): Free Stock Analysis Report NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXPI): Free Stock Analysis Report Meta Platforms, Inc. (META): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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