Hello friends and Fortune readers.
Wall Street futures are higher this morning as China’s markets limp into a long holiday to celebrate the end of WW2. Crude oil futures are still licking their wounds at just over $44 after last week’s rally proved to be short-lived and the dollar is higher against the euro.
Today’s must-read story is by Fortune’s Stephen Gandel on why the stock market may not do much better this month after August’s slide of more than 6%, one of the worst month’s for the market in quite awhile. Short on time? Check out the chart that sums it up.
Here’s what else you need to know today.
1. Federal judge rules to allow class action suit against Uber
Ride-hailing company Uber could potentially have to pay out a much larger sum to drivers in a lawsuit against the company now that a federal judge has granted the case class action status. The two-year-old lawsuit centers on whether Uber has misclassified its drivers as contract workers instead of company employees, and if so, could owe the plaintiff reimbursements for expenses.
2. Migrant crisis bubbles over in Europe
The European Union is in crisis again, as member states argue bitterly over how to cope with the thousands of refugees and migrants flooding across its boarders. The dispute is threatening to wreck the agreement on largely open borders within the E.U. that has been in place for two decades.
3. A sneak peek at the job market.
The August jobs report comes out on Friday, but before then we’ll get an update on the state of private job market from ADP. It’s an important month for employment data given the Federal Reserve’s reliance on the data as it considers an interest rate change. The U.S. has had a string a good reports, including three straight months of 200,000-plus gains. That streak is expected to continue, and economists expect the ADP National Report, out at 8:15 a.m. ET, to show that private payrolls increased 201,000 in August.
4. More economic data.
There’s also a series of other economic data hitting today. The Commerce Department will release August data on factory orders at 10 a.m. ET, which are expected to be up 1% year-over-year, slightly down from July when factory orders increased 1.8% annually. Prior to that, the U.S. Labor Department will released revised data on non-farm productivity over the second quarter at 8:30 a.m. ET. Productivity is expected to have risen by 2.8% on an annual basis, up from a previously reported 1.3% pace.
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5. Beige Book release.
The Federal Reserve will issue its so-called Beige Book, a compilation of anecdotes on the health of the U.S. economy by region and sector. The report is published eight times per year and gathers information from sources across the nation chronicling current economic conditions. The central bank’s July book offered hints of rising wages and increasing demand for skilled labor as business optimism grows. It warned that employers are prepping for bumps to the minimum wage, which could also impact higher earners as well.
–Reuters contributed to this report.
