The Biden White House is once again rooting for a Goldilocks jobs number on Friday, as the Federal Reserve considers increasing its pace of interest rate hikes in the coming weeks as a part of its ongoing efforts to tame inflation.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics is set to announce how many jobs were added to the US economy in the month of February and where the unemployment rate stands and White House officials are keeping their fingers crossed for a moderate report, hoping to land in the sweet spot of around 250,000 jobs added last month.
It is yet another sign that President Joe Biden continues to confront a bit of a problem – or, as White House officials would insist, a good problem – in the form of a hot labor market.
When it comes to one of the thorniest domestic challenges of Biden’s presidency – inflation – White House officials say they’re keeping their eyes on longer-term trends over any one month-to-month fluctuation. Keenly aware of the huge political implications of inflation heading into 2024, they say they remain encouraged that prices have fallen significantly compared to last summer.
The US added a shocking 517,000 jobs in January, with the unemployment rate falling down to its lowest level since the late 1960s. That report blew economists’ expectations out of the water and was yet another stark indication of just how hot the labor market remains, despite the central bank’s extensive efforts to aggressively raise interest rates to try to cool the economy and bring down prices.
White House officials watched closely and took note when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell made clear this week in Washington that the central bank was prepared to bring back higher interest rate hikes if, in part, jobs data continued to come in unexpectedly strong.
“The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated,” Powell testified before lawmakers this week. “If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.”
But even as they are rooting for a weaker jobs report than the previous month’s, White House officials also say they could not deny that more jobs is simply a good thing – that more paychecks for more Americans is a critical indicator of the general strength of the economy. It is also one of the biggest reasons that some administration officials are still quick to dismiss some economists’ predictions of a possible recession.
Source: www.cnn.com