President Donald Trump ‘s tariff saga continues to add new twists and turns. In the week ahead, Wall Street should be braced for more of the same. These days, tariffs are just a fact of life for investors. And they defined the market again last week. Another fact that is increasingly harder to ignore: The market is showing the capacity to move on things other than just trade headlines. That was on display last week with Nvidia ‘s earnings providing a lift to the artificial intelligence cohort. Sure, when push comes to shove, the economic impact of Trump’s tariffs will likely be the biggest driver of corporate earnings going forward and the market’s trajectory. But trade headlines cannot be the only thing that consumes us, especially when they can change on a dime and we’re looking to invest for the long-term. With that in mind, there’s quite a bit on the economic calendar in the coming days, including a look at U.S. construction spending and a checkup on the manufacturing and services sector from the Institute for Supply Management. But the most important batch of data concerns the U.S. labor market, at a time when investors are closely watching out for any cracks in the economy during Trump’s trade war. 1. The parade of jobs data begins Tuesday morning with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, often called the JOLTS report for short. It all leads up to Friday. The purpose of JOLTS, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is to measure the amount of slack in the labor market, which, for investors, can shed light on the health of the economy and potential wage inflation. When there are a lot more job openings than available workers, that means workers generally have a better ability to demand higher wages. This week’s report is for April. It’s now June, so it’s more backward-looking than the rest of the week’s numbers. We get payroll processing firm ADP’s monthly look at private job creation on Wednesday. Typically looked at for clues about what the official government jobs report will say a few days later, the ADP report for May is expected to show 112,000 jobs were added in the month, according to Dow Jones. Thursday brings the usual weekly jobless claims report. After last week’s report showed continuing claims were at their highest levels since November 2021, the market will be particularly keyed into this number. In general, economists and investors alike value this report for its weekly nature, believing that it can snuff out underlying softness in the labor market before monthly reports can, given the shorter lag time. To be sure, it’s more important to watch the trend line here rather than reaching sweeping conclusions from only a single week. These three reports are building up to Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report, which economists expect to show the U.S. added 125,000 jobs in May, according to Dow Jones. That would be down from 177,000 in April. The unemployment rate in May, meanwhile, is expected to stay steady at 4.2%. The biggest question that investors will be trying to answer from the data: What
