After being closed for Independence Day yesterday, markets return to a packed schedule of economic data this morning including the week's first major market event out of Europe.  The European Central Bank (ECB) will deliver it's Rate Decision and hold a press conference beginning at 7:45am New York time.  That will mostly precede the domestic economic events with the exception of MBA Applications and Challenger Layoffs, which print at 700am and 730am respectively.

While the earlier stateside data is on the "not market-moving" end of the spectrum, the balance of the days events shifts to the other side.  Employment continues to be the dominant theme, not only because the mighty Employment Situation comes out the following day, but also because we know that employment in general, is in focus for the Fed.  We've commented recently that markets seem to be trading anticipated Fed reaction to the data more than they're trading the fundamental implications on the economy.  

helping mold the employment picture heading into NFP Friday, we have ADP Private Payrolls at 8:15am and Jobless Claims at 8:30am.  Although not specifically an employment report, the ISM Non-Manufacturing data is a major consideration today in light of the big miss for ISM Manufacturing earlier this week.  

Like that report, today's also has an employment component.  If the employment component of today's ISM data holds its ground in the same way as Monday's employment component (the only sector of the ISM Manufacturing data that was less than awful), then it could help offset a negative headline reading.  In other words, we're as interested in the employment component of today's ISM data as much--if not more than--the headline.

Despite some historical discrepancies, the ADP employment tally has a high degree of correlation with the private payroll component of NFP.  It's just sort of hit or miss as to how it's traded, with the most surprising market-based reactions reserved for the ADP prints that cause markets to fear a potential NFP tape-bomb.  Similarly, Jobless Claims would have to surprise to the upside or downside to have much of an effect considering the series has been exceedingly flat between 360k and 392k for the whole of 2012.