It’s one of “those” weeks on the US macro front.

By that I mean the stars have aligned (or, if you prefer the mundane over the celestial, you can just say schedules have consorted) to create an absurdly crowded calendar that inserts two key quarterly updates and the Treasury refunding announcement into the already packed docket around the May FOMC decision.

As for the Fed, you can read my full preview of the May policy gathering here, but suffice to say it’ll be a “high(er) for longer” message.

The marquee data release is obviously April payrolls. The NFP headline’s seen at 250,000. That’d mark another very solid print coming off the prior month’s blockbuster.

As a reminder, the three-month average moved up to 276,000 based on March’s headline, the highest in a year. Revisions will be eyed closely as usual, but I doubt seriously that April’s release will suggest the labor market’s anything other than strong.

The unemployment rate’s seen steady at 3.8%, and economists are increasingly coming around to the distinct possibility that elevated immigration has changed the game.

Average hourly earnings are seen rising 0.3% MoM. Any material overshoot there would be bearish for risk all else equal given the read-through for a frustrated Fed struggling with sticky services sector inflation and desperate to insist there’s no wage-spiral, evidence be damned.

The wage-price narrative will also be in focus on Tuesday, when the market (and Fed officials meeting in Washington) will get an update on the Employment Cost Index. Regular readers know the backstory: It was an ECI overshoot which compelled Jerome Powell to jettison “transitory” as a description of inflation in late 2021. This series matters, and it matters a lot.

The headline ECI print for Q1’s seen at 1%. As the figure above makes clear, that’s warm, and it’d mark a re-acceleration from Q4’s pace which represented a near three-year low.

Bottom line: You don’t want ECI to overshoot. Particularly not a day ahead of Powell’s press conference.

On Wednesday, in addition to the FOMC decision and Powell’s chat with reporters, markets will get an update on job openings. I continue to believe we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns when it comes to “outsourcing” disinflation to the JOLTS headlines. Barring a recession, job openings will probably remain elevated. The economy has a matching efficiency problem, demand’s robust and so on.

If you look at the state-by-state breakdown, you can find examples of regions where the labor market’s in much better balance, but at the national, economy-wide level, there are still ~1.4 jobs for every “officially” unemployed American.

ADP’s “pay insights” series will be relevant on Wednesday, even as it’s a secondary concern at best. Job switcher pay growth soared in March, according to that data. An encore would be unwelcome.

ISM manufacturing for April’s due out at the same time as the JOLTS release. The marquee gauge of US factory activity moved back into expansion territory in March for the first time since late 2022, and economists expect it to stay there. Barely. Consensus is 50.2. ISM services is due Friday, an hour and a half after the jobs report.

The sleeper this week is the first read on productivity and unit labor costs for Q1. That release typically gets short shrift, but it’s relevant, particularly at a time when productivity is a trending macro topic.

Finally, this week brings the Treasury borrowing estimate (Monday) and the refunding details (Wednesday). That could be a non-event or it could by a very meaningful event. Those interested are encouraged to peruse my QRA preview here.

Also on deck in the US: Updates on the two key national home price indexes, Conference Board confidence and earnings reports from Apple and Amazon.

Good luck keeping up. And stay tuned.