By WSJ Staff 

This week, the Federal Reserve will convene for a two-day meeting to set monetary policy, and numbers on the European economy's growth rate and the U.S. jobs market will be released.

MONDAY: The Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation, the personal-consumption expenditures price index, is expected to show little change in consumer costs in March. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal predict the U.S. Commerce Department will report flat core PCE prices on a monthly basis, after a 0.2% increase in February. The overall PCE index in February was up 2.1% from a year earlier, exceeding the Fed's target for a 2% annual gain for the first time in nearly five years.

WEDNESDAY: The Fed's interest-rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee isn't expected to change monetary policy when it concludes its two-day meeting, although uncertainty about the prospect of a June rate rise lingers. Several Fed officials have indicated they expect to lift rates around two more times this year. Friday's weak gross domestic product report, which showed the U.S. economy grew at a 0.7% annual rate, likely won't be enough to prevent the Fed from raising rates in June.

Figures to be released by the European Union's statistics agency are expected to show eurozone GDP grew at a quarter-to-quarter rate of 0.5% in the first three months of the year. That would be a slightly faster rate of growth than has been typical of the eurozone's recovery since mid-2013, and would mean the currency area outpaced both the U.S. and the U.K. In the fourth quarter, seasonally adjusted GDP rose by 1.7% in the euro area compared with the same quarter the previous year.

THURSDAY: Bank of Canada Gov. Stephen Poloz will deliver a speech in Mexico City at an event sponsored by a Mexican-Canadian business group, CanCham Mexico. His speech comes as the Trump administration hopes to start talks on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, with Canada and Mexico as soon as this summer.

FRIDAY: The U.S. Labor Department releases the April jobs report, after last month's report presented a mixed picture of the labor market. The March report showed hiring slowed dramatically from earlier in the year, but the unemployment rate dropped to 4.5%, the lowest level in nearly a decade. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect the U.S. economy added 185,000 jobs in April, up from 98,000 the previous month.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 30, 2017 15:14 ET (19:14 GMT)