High points for economic data scheduled for November 25 week

The November 25 week includes the official US Thanksgiving observance on Thursday and the unofficial holiday of Black Friday the day after. Many businesses give their workers a four-day weekend by shifting time off from Veterans Day to Black Friday. Where that isn’t the case, workers who have leave take time off. This is an extremely busy travel weekend – one of the busiest of the year – and is the traditional kick-off for shopping for the December holidays. However, retailers and etailers have already been aggressively promoting holiday bargains and encouraging early shopping.

Virtually all the economic reports are jammed into the first three days of the week. There are a few changes from the usual release patterns to keep in mind:

• Weekly initial jobless claims will be reported at 8:30 ET on Wednesday, not Thursday.
• The minutes of the November 6-7 FOMC meeting will be released at 14:00 ET on Tuesday, not Wednesday.
• Personal income and spending numbers will be released the same day as the GDP report and later than usual. The report will be released on Wednesday at 10:00 ET.
• Freddie Mac weekly mortgage rates will be released at 12:00 ET on Wednesday, not Thursday.
• Thursday afternoon reports from the Federal Reserve will be on Friday, not Thursday.

Among the clutter of reports there should be two that get particular attention.

First, the FOMC minutes will be carefully parsed to see if the outcome of the presidential election is visible in the deliberations for the policy outlook. It won’t. Expect the minutes to stress FOMC data-dependence and that executive and legislative branch policies are only one part of a much larger model that can’t be understood until the actuality emerges. There will probably be no significant information about the immediate policy outlook. The discussions took place three weeks earlier, and there have been important data releases that have to be taken into account for the December 17-18 meeting. Notably this includes a less favorable view on consumer price inflation in October and upward revisions to consumer spending in the third quarter and a decent start at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

Second, the second estimate of third quarter GDP at 8:30 ET on Wednesday should get an upward revision with the stronger data for retail spending, lifting growth from up 2.8 percent in the advance estimate. Despite weak confidence, consumers continue to broadly see modest increases in income that results in economic participation. There seems to be some momentum that will carry into the fourth quarter, although some of that is consumers stocking up on non-perishable items for which they think that prices are going to go up and/or could be less available in the near future. Some activity may be borrowed from the first quarter 2025.