Economic calendar
Family IX · Macro
Not to be confused with non farm payrolls, interest rate decision, consumer price index.
Economic calendar is a forward-looking timetable of scheduled macroeconomic releases, central bank announcements and official events, organised by date and time. Each entry typically names the indicator, the economy it covers, the reporting agency and the time of publication. Calendars are compiled by data providers and news services rather than issued by a single authority, so coverage and timestamps differ between them.
What appears on a calendar
Typical entries include inflation and employment reports, gross domestic product releases, interest rate decisions, central bank minutes, and surveys such as purchasing managers' indices. Each line usually shows the scheduled time in a chosen time zone, the previous reading, a consensus forecast where one exists, and the actual figure once released.
Some calendars add a volatility or importance rating. These ratings are editorial judgements by the provider, not official classifications, and they vary between calendars.
Timing and revisions
Publication times are set by the issuing statistical agency or central bank and can be delayed, brought forward or cancelled. Figures are frequently revised after first release, so the number shown at the scheduled moment may later change.
Consensus forecasts are compiled from surveys of economists by data vendors; the size and composition of the panel differ by provider, so the same release can carry different expected values on different calendars.
Worked example: reading a release
The actual figure is compared with the consensus, not with the previous reading alone. A miss against forecast is the event the calendar entry exists to flag; the prior number may also be revised in the same release.
Often confused with
- non farm payrolls
- Non farm payrolls is the monthly change in the number of paid employees in the United States excluding farm workers, private household employees, and non-profit organisation employees, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- interest rate decision
- An interest rate decision is the formal announcement by a central bank's policy committee of the target level for its policy interest rate, or of a change to that level, following a scheduled or ad hoc policy meeting.
- consumer price index
- The Consumer Price Index is a statistical measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban households for a fixed basket of goods and services, used to gauge inflation.