We'll get payrolls and employment data overnight. Meanwhile, two surveys suggest that the broad trend in the labour market is loosening. A tight labour market is one where it is easy to find jobs, but hard to find employees.
The "jobs hard to fill" data come from the NFIB (National Federation of Independent (i.e., small) Business). As you can see, it was harder to fill jobs in 2021 and 2022 than it is now. Note however that this index is still higher than it's been for most of the last 25 years. Implication: wages are likely to continue to drift higher, but more slowly.
The "jobs plentiful" data come from the Conference Board's consumer confidence survey. Consumers feel that fewer jobs are available, than was the case 2 years ago. This index is back at pre-covid and 1998–1999 levels. In 1999, wage inflation was around 3.8%, whereas now it's around 4.5%. So this indicator suggests that wage inflation will drift lower from here. Since consumer price inflation will also be falling, that suggests real wages will continue rising, or will stay where they are, at around 1.5% per annum. This is still too low, but is an improvement of the situation one and two years ago. A rise in the minimum wage would help lift the whole spectrum of employee remuneration. A Democrat Party win in November would help bring this about.
As long as the economic recovery deepens and strengthens, the decline in the indicators shown in the chart below, will be slow. In fact, the "jobs plentiful" survey has shown an interesting uptick over the last few months. We'll see whether that continues.
Meanwhile, we await the official labour market data, to be released overnight.
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