Week Ahead: Jobs, Cars and Retail Sales On Tap

Jobs, cars and retail sales will lead the economic headlines next week. It’s also another big week for second-quarter earnings. The July unemployment rate, to be released next Friday, is expected to tick up to 9.6% from 9.5% in June. Auto makers and major retailers will release July sales figures Tuesday and Thursday, respectively. Three Dow Jones Industrial Average components and a fifth of the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index will report second-quarter results next week in the final "peak" week of earnings season. Economists expect the July jobless rate, to be issued next Friday, will rise slightly from June, when only 83,000 private-sector jobs were created, according to the Labor Department's initial reading. Overall, the U.S. shed jobs in June for the first time this year as hundreds of thousands of part-time Census jobs ended. The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week, but that followed a big rise the previous period, signaling little improvement in the job market. July U.S. new-vehicle sales, out Tuesday, are expected to grow 8.4% from a year earlier, according to Edmunds.com, which expects sales to be the highest since the Cash For Clunkers frenzy last August. U.S. auto sales in July 2009 reached their highest pace since before the financial crisis, boosted at the end of the month by a rush of customers lured into showrooms by the federal government's rebate program, the car-shopping Web site said. Edmunds on Thursday estimated the industry will sell roughly 1.1 million units in July, which would result in a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 11.8 million units, up from 11.1 million in June. Major retailers will report July same-store sales Thursday, after posting mixed results a month earlier. Some stores benefited from aggressive promotions in June, while others remained pinched by consumers' restrained spending. Major media companies, which are among those reporting results next week, are expected to show improvements from a year earlier as advertising markets rebound. CBS Corp. CBS, which reports Tuesday, is likely to see results similar to General Electric Co.'s GE NBC, which said second-quarter ad sales climbed 20% on strength at its cable networks, local stations and even the flagship network. News Corp. NWSA, owner of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of this newswire, and Time Warner Inc. TWX both report Wednesday. Both companies are likely to show strength in their cable networks. Viacom Inc. VIA, which reports Thursday, is expected to benefit from a string of blockbusters produced by its Paramount Pictures unit. Pfizer Inc. PFE, the world's biggest drug maker by sales, wraps up Big Pharma's second-quarter reporting season Tuesday. To read the rest, head over to FOX Business