US jobs report, September 2018

Jasper Juinen/Getty Images

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is set to release the September
jobs report at 8:30 a.m. ET. 

Economists forecast another robust month of job gains. Employers
likely added 185,000 nonfarm payrolls on net while the
unemployment rate returned to an 18-year low of 3.8%, according
to estimates compiled by Bloomberg. 

As usual, the focus will be on wages — but even more so this
time.

Earlier this week, Amazon
announced that it was
raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than twice the
federal mandate of $7.25. That’s obviously not going to move the
needle on last month’s wage number, but serves as a key anecdote
into the pressure companies are under — politically and due to a

tight labor market — to pay workers more. 

Average hourly earnings are forecast to have risen 0.3%
month-on-month and 2.8% year-on-year. 

Investors are also watching the wage-growth number closely amid a
sell-off in the bond market this week. Bond yields rise when
prices fall, and they spiked to the
highest level in over seven years after a strong payroll
report from ADP and bullish comments from the Federal Reserve
Chairman Jerome Powell. 

“The US economy is on fire right now and the bond market
has been underestimating just how hot the economy is,” said
Lawler Jasper, the head of research at London Capital Group.
“What we are seeing here is that complacency start to
fade.”

More to come, refresh this page for the latest at 8:30 a.m.
ET. 

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