Economy

Kevin Warsh is scheduled to give his first major address as Federal Reserve Chair at the Jackson Hole symposium on August 28, against a backdrop of July core PCE inflation at 3.3% year over year, a 9-3 FOMC vote in July to hold rates steady, and three dissenting members who preferred a 25-basis-point hike. Warsh described the speech beforehand as a 'blank piece of paper,' leaving its policy content unconfirmed, while market pricing as of August 27 put the probability of a September rate increase at roughly one in three. The next FOMC meeting is scheduled for September 15-16, and no rate decision or speech content had been reported at the time this summary was compiled.

The ECB Governing Council unanimously kept its deposit facility rate at 2.25% in July, explicitly declining to pre-commit to a September hike despite some members indicating they would not have opposed an increase. The central concern was a rebound in energy commodity prices following renewed Middle East hostilities, which members judged could keep euro-area HICP inflation above the 2% target into the first half of 2027. Media reports citing unnamed sources suggest governors lean toward a 25-basis-point increase at the 9–10 September Berlin meeting, but the official July account remains the authoritative record, and no formal decision has been announced.

Seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims fell to 203,000 for the week ended August 22, down 4,000 from the prior week's upwardly revised 207,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Continued claims for the week ended August 15 also declined, dropping 18,000 to 1,778,000. The weekly figures are volatile and should not be used to infer monthly payroll trends, which are measured separately by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Kansas City Fed's Tenth District manufacturing composite index reached 10 in August, its second consecutive monthly increase, with new orders up 6 points to 16 and prices received jumping 8 points to 36. Raw material prices continued to climb, with that index reaching 55, while the employment index fell to zero. Respondents flagged persistent cost pressures, financing burdens, and customer demand uncertainty as ongoing constraints on business planning.

The University of Michigan's preliminary August 2026 consumer sentiment index came in at 51.0, down 7.6 percent from July, with declines across all three indexes and one-year inflation expectations ticking up to 4.3 percent. Sentiment dropped most sharply among older, lower-income, and non-college-educated consumers, while only 8 percent of respondents expected income growth to outpace inflation in the year ahead, down from 18 percent in December 2024. The final August figures are scheduled for release at 10 a.m. ET today, though research from the Kansas City Fed notes that sentiment readings have a modest and limited relationship to actual consumer spending outcomes.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics was set to publish its first-quarter 2026 Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and a preliminary Current Employment Statistics benchmark for March 2026 on August 28, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. The QCEW covers more than 95% of U.S. jobs and provides the administrative employment and wage records that anchor the annual CES benchmark revision, with the final benchmark adjustment expected alongside the January 2027 Employment Situation report in February 2027. No official figures had been published as of the research cutoff, so national employment totals, average weekly wages, and industry or state growth rates remain unreported.

The Philadelphia Fed publishes its August State Coincident Indexes at 10:00 a.m. EDT today, offering a state-by-state read on whether economic growth remains broadly distributed or is narrowing. The most recent available data, from June, showed indexes rising in 42 states over one month and 46 states over three months, with a U.S. index gain of 0.6 percent over the three-month period. Today's release will show whether those breadth readings held, improved, or declined into August.