The hotly anticipated US jobs report has the potential to tip the scales toward a third jumbo-sized hike in interest rates later this month after a wave of data that point to a resilient consumer and high labor demand.
Friday’s report is one of the last marquee releases Fed officials will have in hand before the mid-September policy meeting to help them decipher a complex economic and inflationary puzzle.
Forecasts call for a healthy, yet more moderate 298,000 gain in August payrolls and for the unemployment rate to hold steady at 3.5%, matching the lowest in five decades. Solid wage growth is also expected amid a persistent mismatch between labor demand and supply.
Such figures, in conjunction with a blowout July employment print, improving consumer sentiment figures and a surprise pickup in job openings, could be enough to push the Fed to raise borrowing costs by 75 basis points, extending the steepest interest-rate hikes in a generation to curb an inflation surge.
“In the context of all those data, this report becomes very important,” said Anna Wong, chief US economist at Bloomberg Economics. It could “put a stamp of confirmation” on the trend the other data have been showing -- that the economy is very resilient.
Fresh data out Thursday suggest demand for labor continues to be healthy. Initial applications for unemployment benefits dropped for a third week to a two-month low, according to Labor Department data.
However, any indication of much softer employment growth in Friday’s report, combined with a bigger slowdown in the Labor Department’s average hourly earnings figures, may help shift expectations toward a half-point rate hike. Still, Fed officials will need to see results of the consumer price index later this month to crystallize their views on the appropriate policy response.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week the central bank’s decision later this month “will depend on the totality of the incoming data and the evolving outlook.”
One important component of the jobs report will be the pay metrics. Economists expect the report will show a 0.4% increase in average hourly earnings from a month earlier and a 5.3% rise from August 2021. The annual increase would represent a slight acceleration from the previous two months.
A slowdown in wage growth could give Fed officials some comfort by suggesting a softening in inflationary pressures, though that is not always the case, said Claudia Sahm, founder of Stay-At-Home Macro (SAHM) Consulting and a former Fed economist.