Non-Farms Friday Fever.

The markets focus today will firmly be on Non-Farm pay rolls out of the US at 1:30pm. After a huge miss of almost 750,000 jobs last month, a bounce back is expected. Much of the US workforce is reluctant to get back to work due to the central government subsidised unemployment benefit. Analysts are predicting around 645k jobs would have been added in May with unemployment falling from 6.1% to 5.9%. If these numbers are missed again we will likely see dollar weakness and volatility in the afternoon session.

One of the few ‘Green-List’ nations, Portugal, was moved to the ‘Amber-List’ yesterday in a blow to UK travellers and the travel industry as a whole. The decision was announced by Boris Johnson yesterday after a recent spike in cases in the country that has largely been attributed to the Champions league final. Planes full of Manchester City and Chelsea fans who have since returned home from Portugal have been ordered to isolate.

G7 finance ministers are meeting today to broker a global tax deal. The meeting chaired by Rishi Sunak is aiming to raise more tax from the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon. President Biden has suggested a blanket 15% tax and has suspended tariffs of 25% on European luxury goods for 6 months to incentivise a deal.

UK car sales were up 670% in May compared to the same time last year. Such an increase suggests that pent up demand and people’s savings are now being spent in a shot in the arm to bolster the economy.

In another positive for the UK economy, British employers took on permanent staff at their fastest rate since record keeping began in the late 1990’s. Starting salaries also rose at their highest rate since 2018. That said, skilled labour is still in short supply and has only been made more stark by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Economic Calendar