The U.S. market is driving the world -- whose stock indices plunged after yesterday's 345 Dow rout. But what does today bring? A chance for recovery or further devastation depending on whether reported economic statistics are better or worse than economists expect. Early reports are bad.

Here are the reports to watch, and what analysts had been expecting according to CNNMoney:

• Job cuts - Economists expected 75,000 lost jobs, but the 8:30am report was 84,000 lost jobs -- worse than expected.
• Unemployment rate - They had forecast the jobless rate to stay the same at 5.7%, but economists were wrong on this one too and unemployment rose to 6.1%.
• Hours worked - Economists anticipated the hour work week wouldn't change from July at 33.7, and they were right.
• Change in hourly earnings - Economists saw a 0.3% increase in the hourly wage, the same as July, but hourly wages rose 0.4%. Some may interpret this as inflationary pressure, but the increase is likely not enough to increase consumer spending either.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

Market to tumble on bad economic stats originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.