The Labor Department report on Friday is going to be a very interesting. Investors and traders, and the public for that matter, have to worry about the real unemployment report as debate swirls on how long the quantitative easing measures that have fueled much of the economic gains should continue. Right now, the markets are more concerned about the ending and tapering of quantitative easing than they are about economic growth numbers.

With this report coming on Friday, July 5, 2013, many of the A-team members of the trading community and many major investors will not even be in. For anyone that can take the time off, this will be a four- or five-day weekend. Many people will not even know that the number came out, and many may not care.

The reality is that such an important number happening on a light-attendance trading day could pose risks to the stock and bond markets. Any serious difference from this report could be accompanied by unusually large moves of a sort that might not happen if all market participants were there.

The formal employment report is scheduled for Friday, but here is a look at some of the preliminary jobs data, with consensus estimates from Bloomberg:

• WEDS 7:30 a.m. Challenger Job Cut Report
• WEDS 8:30 a.m. ADP Employment Report (165,000 est.)
• THURSDAY U.S. MARKETS CLOSED
• FRI 8:30 a.m. Weekly Jobless Claims (345,000 est.)
• FRI 8:30 a.m. Nonfarm Payrolls (161,000 est.)
• FRI 8:30 a.m. Private Sector Payrolls (175,000 est.)
• FRI 8:30 a.m. Unemployment Rate (7.5% est.)

As far as what happened a month ago, the gains in nonfarm payrolls rose 175,000 for May, after rising a revised 149,000 in April. The official unemployment rate ticked up to 7.6% from 7.5% in April, at a time when the expectation was only a 7.5% unemployment rate.

You can largely ignore the weekly jobless claims this week, as they will be concurrent with the unemployment release. That timing is a very strange one when both are released simultaneously. Generally it happens only every few years.

Getting weekly claims at the same time as the employment report on a day when the public and the investing community will have low interest makes this report feel very skewed even before the event.

UPDATE: The Challenger report showed nearly 260,000 jobs cut, the ADP report showed 188,000 new jobs added, and weekly jobless claims — released Wednesday — fell to 343,000.

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