The April employment report will headline a busy data week for economy-watchers. Coming reports might change what we think of first-quarter growth and our views of what’s ahead. To those ends, here are five things to watch. Read More »

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams said Friday it’s still possible the U.S. central bank can raise interest rates this summer.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Mr. Williams said that while economic activity over the start of the year was disappointing, he had not yet changed his forecast for the year. To support a rate rise in the early summer, Mr. Williams said “I can imagine that constellation of data coming in before June or the meetings right after that too. But it would require the data to be good” to cause officials to raise the cost of borrowing in the U.S. economy.

� Read More »

The White House is attacking one of the central critiques of its trade policy: that free-trade agreements can lead to outsourcing and offshoring that destroy American jobs. Economists, though, aren’t buying the administration’s logic. Read More »

Move over, Mexico. When it comes to sending immigrants to the U.S., China and India have taken over. China was the country of origin for 147,000 recent U.S. immigrants in 2013, while Mexico sent just 125,000, according to a Census Bureau study by researcher Eric Jensen and others presented Friday. India, with 129,000 immigrants, also beat Mexico, though the two countries’ results weren’t statistically different from each other. Read More »

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said Friday she is not yet willing to rule out supporting a rise in rates at central bank’s June policy meeting despite data showing a very weak start to growth in 2015. When it comes to boosting rates off their current near zero levels, “all meetings are on the table,” Ms. Mester told reporters after a speech held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Read More »

The Wall Street Journal’s Daily Report on Global Central Banks for Friday, May 1, 2015:

Sign up for the newsletter: http://on.wsj.com/grandcentralsignup

Scanning through Eurostat’s April report on eurozone consumer prices reminded me of one of the 1970s-era Schoolhouse Rock education videos I grew up with: My Hero, Zero.

The clip (which, as you probably guessed, taught math skills) opens with a little boy saying, “Zero is a wonderful thing. In fact, Zero is my hero.”

� Read More »

Given the ongoing weakness in Japanese growth and inflation, most Bank of Japan watchers believe the prospect of added stimulus by the central bank is a question of when rather than if.

But many analysts are now pushing back their forecasts for when the trigger will be pulled, following the central bank’s extension of its self-imposed deadline for hitting its inflation target. Read More »

Democratic lawmakers upped the ante Thursday in their push to raise the federal minimum wage, latching onto an income-inequality debate that is quickly becoming a focal point of the 2016 election. Read More »

Every year, the Population Association of America, a nonprofit scientific organization made up of nearly 3,000 demographers, hosts a conference where experts from around the globe unveil new research and get critical feedback. The work is wide-ranging—with academics, government researchers and think-tank and NGO experts discussing everything from reproductive health in Malaysia to kids living with their parents in the U.S. Here are a few of the papers catching our eye. Read More »

It’s now been nearly three years since U.S. inflation hit the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, according to new data from the Commerce Department. The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, rose just 0.3% in March from a year earlier, the same increase as the previous month, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Read More »