The jobs figures, released on the first Friday of every month, have been closely watched by Wall Street, which is eager to see interest rates drop, and in Washington, where the strength of hiring has been one of the few bright spots for the Biden administration, which is struggling with poor polling on its economic policies.
Along with inflation figures, which come out later in the month, the Federal Reserve uses jobs figures to determine whether the economy is cooling and ready for interest rates to drop.
Last month, officials at the Fed kept rates at a two-decade high of around 5.3%, where it has been for nearly a year. The Fed has been trying to bring inflation down to 2%. In May, inflation sat at 3.4% – lower than its peak of 9.1% in June 2022, but still higher than the Fed’s target rate.
Minutes from the Fed’s last meeting were released on Wednesday and showed the central bank was waiting for “additional favorable data” before making cuts.
But in bringing inflation down, the Fed must make sure the labor market is not cooling too much. Earlier this week, the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said at an event that the economy has “made a lot of progress” and has “seen a pretty substantial move toward better balance” in the labor market.
“We want to be more confident that inflation is moving sustainably down. We want to understand that the levels that we’re seeing are a true reading on what is actually happening with underlying inflation,” Powell said.
US workers at John Deere plants have accused the company of acting on “greed” as America’s...
About two weeks since its meteoric debut, shares of Truth Social are slumping, wiping out billions...
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surpassed 40,000 points on Thursday for the first time ever, signaling...
The US workforce added 303,000 jobs last month, far more than expected and the 39th straight...
