Towards a landing of the labor market in the United States

This is another way of measuring the morale of business leaders: are they ready to hire? Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, noted on Wednesday a ” recent shift to a more cautious pace of hiring, perhaps as companies try to decipher mixed signals from the economy. In August, the American private sector created 132,000 jobs, far from the 300,000 expected by the consensus and the 270,000 recorded in June. ” We could be at an inflection point, moving from super-vitamin job gains to something more normal concluded Nela Richardson. The monetary tightening carried out by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) to fight inflation could have the side effect of encouraging companies to think twice in order to recruit and to moderate wage inflation. ” The history of cycles suggests that to bring down inflation, it is necessary to go through the destruction of jobs and a significant rise in unemployment “, recalled the firm Oddo BHF in a note at the beginning of the week.

The Fed in ambush

Following the ADP survey, economists have revised their forecasts symbolically downwards with a view to the publication of the monthly report on employment by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), at 2:30 p.m. out of 298,000 net hires in August in the private and public sectors (excluding agriculture), against 300,000 at the start of the week and 528,000 in July. The unemployment rate is expected to be stable at 3.5% of the active population and the average hourly wage up by 5.3% over one year (+0.4% over one month). Of course, the Federal Reserve (Fed) will examine all this data in great detail, even if it seems certain that it will raise its key rates by 75 basis points at its meeting on September 21.

Producer prices on an upward trajectory

In addition to US employment, investors will be interested in the evolution of US industrial orders in July (consensus: +0.2% over one month), the German trade balance for the same period, the budgetary situation of the French State in September and, finally, to the producer price index in the euro zone in July. As for the consumer price index, the trend should remain bullish. Economists forming the Bloomberg consensus expect a 2.6% increase over one month in producer prices in July, after 1.1% in June, which would take their soaring to 35.9% over one year, after 35 .8% in June.