Economy

The Labor Department's weekly unemployment insurance report, scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Eastern on August 13, will be measured against a baseline of 199,000 seasonally adjusted initial claims for the week ending August 1. The release follows a July Employment Situation report showing nonfarm payrolls fell 23,000, an unemployment rate of 4.1%, and downward revisions totaling 103,000 fewer jobs in May and June than previously reported. The weekly figure will indicate whether new filings or continued claims are rising alongside the payroll decline, though a single week of claims data is not sufficient to confirm a broader labor market shift.

Eurostat's June 2026 industrial production aggregates for the euro area and EU were not retrievable from official data sources as of August 13, 2026, one day after the scheduled August 12 release date. Country-level readings for Germany, France, Italy, and Spain are available by goods category, but the absence of EA21 and EU27 headline figures means no conclusion can be drawn on whether manufacturing recovered from May's 0.2% monthly decline. A data inconsistency in Germany's total-industry figure across two separate queries adds a further unresolved complication.

The Bank of Japan's preliminary July 2026 Corporate Goods Price Index shows the domestic producer price index at 135.8, up 7.2% year-on-year, driven by seasonal electricity surcharges and gains in beverages, nonferrous metals, and electrical machinery, while petroleum and chemicals weighed against the increase. Contract-currency export prices declined 0.6% month-on-month even as yen-basis export prices edged up 0.1%, reflecting the role of exchange-rate movements in the divergence. The BOJ held its overnight call rate at 1.0% on 31 July and projects core CPI to move clearly above 2% in the second half of fiscal 2026, citing yen depreciation and commodity prices as key drivers.