Pages

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Markets poised for US jobs report and European Central Bank meeting

Bumper day for economic news, with the latest US non-farm payroll and the ECB's monthly press conference.

Coming up today...

American jobs report - what's expected

Greece power workers to strike against privatisation plan

8.35am BST

Shares in Balfour Beatty have slumped 10% after a disappointing trading update this morning.

design changes, project delays, rework on projects and contractual disputes on a number of projects.

8.17am BST

Greek citizens face the prospect of power cuts today, as workers at the country's Public Power Corporation begin a series of rolling blackouts.

They're protesting against the government's plans to sell off PPC, as part of its bailout programme. A bill to partly privatise the company is being debated in parliament today.

There is no danger of a blackout,

We are going on strike at all of PPCs production units and mines from Komotini to Arcadia but nobody said that all the plants would go off line at the same time. The action will be staggered because nobody wants the country to be plunged into darkness.

good morning! and here we are in #greece, waiting for the lights to go out. (literally, as figuratively we've been in darkness for a while)

8.09am BST

As usual, economists have a wide range of forecasts for how many new jobs were created across the US economy last month.

Predictions for today's non-farm payroll range from a paltry 160,000 new jobs to a rip-roaring 290,000.

That would be similar to Mays increase of 217,000 and would probably be enough to push the unemployment rate down to 6.2%, from 6.3% in May

Initial jobless claims have remained close to a seven-year low and the employment balances of most of the activity surveys have improved.

8.00am BST

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the financial markets, the world economy, business and the eurozone.

Later today will see EU services PMIs, ECB, NFP, ISM non-manf all ahead of a US holiday tomorrow....

Continue reading...

READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.theguardian.com