Friday’s jobs report will likely determine the size of the Fed’s rate cut
CNN
The Federal Reserve is expected to shift gears this month on monetary policy and enact the first rate cut since the central bank started its inflation-fighting tightening cycle 30 months ago.
The Federal Reserve is expected to shift gears this month on monetary policy and enact the first rate cut since the central bank started its inflation-fighting tightening cycle 30 months ago. Although key inflation readings, including the closely watched Consumer Price Index, are due out a week before that crucial decision, the size of the rate cut likely will be determined this Friday. The US economy is at an inflection point, and Friday’s jobs report, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics is set to release at 8:30 am ET, could very well telegraph the direction of the economy. “The next set of job numbers released this week will be among the most consequential in a while,” Tuan Nguyen, US economist at RSM US, wrote in commentary issued Wednesday. The August jobs report is expected to provide clarity as to whether the labor market is slowing gracefully or spiraling quickly. A few weeks ago, the July jobs report signaled the latter, when the economy added just 114,000 positions and the unemployment rate shot to 4.3% from 4.1%. The numbers sent a violent reaction through the stock market as fears escalated that the once strong labor market — and the economy — were buckling under the crushing weight of high interest rates.
The DeepSeek drama may have been briefly eclipsed by, you know, everything in Washington (which, if you can believe it, got even crazier Wednesday). But rest assured that over in Silicon Valley, there has been nonstop, Olympic-level pearl-clutching over this Chinese upstart that managed to singlehandedly wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap in just a few hours and put America’s mighty tech titans on their heels.
At her first White House briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made an unusual claim about inflation that has stung American shoppers for years: Leavitt said egg prices have continued to surge because “the Biden administration and the department of agriculture directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”