Consumers jobs and interest rates, oh my. From Marketplace, I'm Sabrie Vanashore,

and for David Brancaccio. We are going to get some important insights this

week on how the US economy is doing,

consumer confidence, how optimistic or pessimistic are consumers about the economy.

We'll find out what the unemployment rate is and how many jobs are out there on Friday and smack in the

middle of it all the Federal Reserve is going to meet up and talk about what to do

with interest rates in the economy. So we've got Julia Coronado here to help us out sort through it all. She's the

founder of macro policy perspectives and a professor at UT Austin. Morning Julia.

Good morning. So quite a few things coming out this week starting with

consumer confidence. Just remind us why we care about consumer confidence and

what it means for the economy. Well there is a relationship between how consumers feel and what they do with their money, and that powers the economy since consumers are about 70% of GDP, so we care about how they feel about things.

They don't always do what they say.

Oftentimes when consumers feel gloomy,

they still go out and spend their money.

But nonetheless, it's a good thing

to take the consumer's temperature and see how they're feeling.

Any idea of how they're going to say they feel tomorrow?

Well, consumers have had a bit of a bounce back in sentiment as gas prices fell. Late last year gas prices

have been ticking up and we've seen some backtracking so we'll see it looks

like we've you know we've got some good news on the horizon that gas prices might come down but

Overall consumer sentiment is okay sort of in the zone, they're feeling a little less cranky than they were when inflation was high, but still reasonably solid because the job market's been pretty solid.

And on the job market, we will get the sort of national tally of hiring by most employers

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