What you are about to read (if you do) is probably irrelevant. Traders in Asia will spend tomorrow fretting about the upcoming Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcement & Powell's press conference, not local data. Or just drinking beer.

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Official employment data comes from New Zealand only once a quarter, and on Wednesday morning (NZ local time) we get jobs data for Q4 2022.

Capacity constraints, mainly labour supply, have been an issue for NZ business. But have kept the labour market bubbling along. This is expected to continue in the data for Q4.

Also on the agenda are manufacturing PMIs from Australia, Japan and the privately surveyed Caixin/Markit one from China. China's official PMIs were published just a few hours ago:

I've posted on the difference between the official and private survey PMIs before, so this is a repeat, but ICYMI:

  • The official PMI and Caixin PMI are different surveys, of different firms, with different characteristics, so they often have diverging results.
  • In brief, the Caixin/Markit surveys smaller firms than does the official survey from China's National Bureau of Statistics/China Logistics Information Center.
Economic calendar in Asia 1 February 2023
  • This snapshot from the ForexLive economic data calendar, access it here.
  • The times in the left-most column are GMT.
  • The numbers in the right-most column are the 'prior' (previous month/quarter as the case may be) result. The number in the column next to that, where there is a number, is the consensus median expected.

  • I’ve noted data for New Zealand and Australia with text as the similarity of the little flags can sometimes be confusing.