After the announcement of FOMC’s interest rate decision on Wednesday, the American Bureau of Labour Statistics is going to release the new labour market data for July this Friday.
The report is expected to demonstrate the flexibility of the US labour market as the overall forecasts do not expect a change in the unemployment rate from the current level of 3.7 per cent. The most pivotal component of the entire report, however, is going to be the expected change in the average hourly earnings for the previous month.
Employees who earn higher wages are more likely to spend larger amounts of capital on goods and services within the economy, which would, in turn, incite a hike in the prices and boost the inflation towards the 2 per cent symmetrical target-level. Essentially, higher hourly earnings can be expected to boost the retail sales numbers, which grew only marginally in June but are still at a suboptimal level at 3.4 per cent.
The US labour market is expected to have added an additional 160 000 persons to the labour force in July, which would be less than the 224 000 new job openings in June.