Explainer

How to read the economic calendar

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By AP's Morning Brief · October 27, 2026 · No invented figures

An economic calendar is a timetable of scheduled data releases and central-bank decisions: jobs reports, inflation prints, GDP, rate announcements and the like. Our Markets page embeds TradingView’s free economic calendar for the United States and Canada. This guide is about reading any such calendar, not about predicting the next move.

General information and education only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security.

1. What you’re looking at

Each row is usually: time, country, event name, importance (often colour-coded), then columns for actual, forecast/consensus and prior. Before the release, “actual” is blank. After it, the number fills in and the row may flash.

Times on our site are whatever TradingView’s feed shows (typically local to the widget’s locale setting). The brief itself states times in Eastern Time (ET). When in doubt, check the releasing agency’s own schedule.

2. Importance filters are a starting point, not a law

Calendars mark some events as higher importance — for the U.S., that often includes the employment report, CPI, PCE, GDP and FOMC decisions. Filters help you ignore noise. They don’t guarantee a big market move: a “high importance” print can be quiet if it matches expectations, and a quieter release can move markets if it surprises.

3. Actual vs. forecast vs. prior

• Forecast / consensus is usually an average of economist estimates compiled by data vendors. It is not official and it is not a promise.
• Prior is the previous reading — sometimes revised later. A “beat” vs. an unrevised prior can look different once revisions land.
• Actual is the number the agency published. Agencies can and do revise earlier months in later releases.

4. Who publishes the underlying data

Use the calendar as a map, then read the primary source when a number matters:

• U.S. labour and inflation: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
• U.S. GDP and personal income/outlays (including PCE): U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
• Fed decisions and statements: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
• Bank of Canada decisions: Bank of Canada
• Canadian economic releases: Statistics Canada

5. How we use it in the brief

Each weekday edition lists what’s on deck for the day and the week, with times in ET and a link to the source we used. The live TradingView panel on /markets is for scanning; the brief is the dated, cited record. Schedules change — holidays, delayed releases and special FOMC press conferences show up on the agencies’ own calendars first.

A calendar entry is not a trade idea.

Sources

1. TradingView, Economic Calendar widget docs: https://www.tradingview.com/widget-docs/widgets/calendars/
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/
3. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis: https://www.bea.gov/
4. Federal Reserve Board: https://www.federalreserve.gov/
5. Bank of Canada: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/
6. Statistics Canada: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/

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