{"id":127787,"date":"2025-09-02T17:56:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T17:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/127787\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T17:56:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T17:56:12","slug":"a-weak-job-market-is-becoming-the-feds-primary-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/127787\/","title":{"rendered":"A weak job market is becoming the Fed’s primary focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fed\u2019s got two basic things it\u2019s supposed to do<\/a>, according to Congress: keep prices stable, while maximizing employment.<\/p>\n

With inflation above the Fed\u2019s 2% target<\/a> and Trump\u2019s tariffs putting upward pressure on prices<\/a>, the Fed\u2019s been keeping interest rates high in \u201crestrictive\u201d territory. <\/p>\n

But last week, Fed Chair Powell signaled that that stance is subtly changing, as worries grow about the job market deteriorating<\/a>. The most recent jobs report showed mediocre job creation in July, while revisions showed barely any jobs added in May and June.<\/p>\n

That really got the Fed\u2019s attention, according to Larry Tentarelli at Blue Chip Daily Trend Report.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like their view is that the labor market is weakening<\/a>, and that is a bigger near-term concern than the inflation issue,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Inflation still matters to the Fed, said Tantarelli, but \u201cI think they\u2019re going to be more focused on incoming labor market data, so the weekly jobless claims, we\u2019ll get another payrolls report Sept. 5.\u201d <\/p>\n

That could also come in pretty weak, said Joe Brusuelas at consulting firm RSM. The labor force is shrinking as Baby Boomers retire and undocumented workers get deported \u2014 meaning, job creation could be in the 50,000-a-month range without pushing unemployment higher.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a big difference between a slower pace of hiring and an increasing pace of firings,\u201d Brusuelas said. \u201cWe\u2019re just not seeing the latter right now.\u201d <\/p>\n

But if the economy actually starts losing jobs and unemployment spikes, the Federal Reserve will be under pressure to cut interest rates more aggressively \u2014\u00a0which Brusuelas said will be hard, if tariffs also cause a resurgence in inflation.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fed\u2019s got two basic things it\u2019s supposed to do, according to Congress: keep prices stable, while maximizing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,2800,9007,42290,134,81369,759,145],"class_list":["post-127787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jobs","tag-business","tag-federal-reserve","tag-interest-rates","tag-job-creation","tag-jobs","tag-new-jobs","tag-tariffs","tag-unemployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}