"When is the next jobs report" isn't usually a burning question when the economy is expanding and the unemployment rate is sitting well below 5%. But a market desperate to discount the pace of Federal Reserve rate cuts amid a cooling labor market has made the nonfarm payrolls report a tent-pole event for forecasting monetary policy.
Let's stipulate that market participants are desperate for the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates because lower rates equal higher future returns for stocks. The fact that the short-term federal funds rate, set by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), is still at elevated levels is hardly ideal for equities.
And yet a resilient labor market – and the wage pressures that come with it – has the Fed worried about easing too quickly. Cut too fast, with a healthy economy and labor market as the backdrop, and inflation could accelerate again, the thinking goes. True, the FOMC could respond by raising rates, but abrupt policy turns don't tend to redound to the Fed's credibility.
Rather, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the rest of the FOMC are trying to engineer what's known as a soft landing. That's where the central bank gets inflation back down to its long-term target of 2% without sparking a recession that throws millions of folks out of work.
And so if inflation is a case of too many dollars chasing too few goods, a tight labor market and rising wages are the last thing the Fed wants to see. That's why any time we get a better-than-expected nonfarm payrolls report, it hasn't been the best news for equities. Plentiful jobs and rising wages typically help fuel inflation, at least when it's demand driven. (That the current period of global inflation appears to have been a supply-side issue is a discussion for another time.)
Bottom line: The Fed will remain data dependent as it works to normalize borrowing costs. That's why the market has become so hinky about the jobs report even though we're not in recession.
When is the next jobs report?
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the Department of Labor, releases the Employment Situation Summary – also known as the employment report, jobs report or nonfarm payrolls report – at 8:30 am Eastern on the first Friday of every month.
The jobs report consists of separate surveys of households and employers estimating the number of people on payrolls, average number of weekly hours worked, average hourly earnings, labor force participation, unemployment rates and other data.
To get a sense of what the BLS is up to, here's an example of some of its methodology: "Each month the program surveys about 119,000 businesses and government agencies representing approximately 629,000 individual worksites, in order to provide detailed industry data on employment, hours, and earnings of workers on nonfarm payrolls. The active sample includes approximately one-third of all nonfarm payroll jobs."
The jobs report gives us a comprehensive look at the labor market, which is ultimately what fuels consumer spending. Recall that consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity, and you can see why the jobs report has always been front and center.
For those wondering "when is the next jobs report?," have a look at the schedule, courtesy of the BLS, below.
