We have two more key economic and labor reports ahead of Friday’s key payrolls and unemployment report. The third-quarter preliminary nonfarm productivity and unit labor costs have been released at the same time as the weekly jobless claims.

As these are somewhat in-line with estimates, and since we already have had two other reports from ADP and from Challenger, Gray and Christmas, we are only going to offer summaries.

The preliminary report showed that third-quarter nonfarm productivity rose by some 1.9%, and it showed that unit labor costs shrank by 0.1%. Bloomberg had estimates of 2.0% on productivity and was looking for a gain of 1.2% on unit labor costs in the third quarter.

The weekly jobless claims came in at 363,000, and that was a drop of 9,000 from an adjusted reading of 372,000. Bloomberg had a consensus reading of 369,000.

Neither of these two reports are going to be enough to change expectations for Friday’s key employment situation report from the Labor Department. Bloomberg has a consensus of 7.9% on the headline unemployment rate. It also sees 125,000 in nonfarm payrolls, and 120,000 of that coming from the private sector payrolls.

JON C. OGG

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