Fed Ready to Handle September Jobs Report With Kid Gloves

Fed Ready to Handle September Jobs Report With Kid Gloves
A Panda Express restaurant displays a "Now Hiring" sign in Tampa, Fla., on June 1, 2021. Octavio Jones/Reuters
|Updated:

U.S. hiring probably accelerated last month, a range of high-frequency indicators suggests, as the effects of the latest COVID-19 surge began to subside, but even a second straight weak employment report would be unlikely to derail the Federal Reserve’s plans to begin reducing its support for the economy.

Ahead of the U.S. Labor Department’s release on Friday of the nonfarm payrolls report for September, data from firms tracking work patterns signals an outcome in line with the median estimate of a gain of 500,000 jobs in a Reuters poll of economists. And that may be more than enough.