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Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her vice chair, Stanley Fischer, both speaking on Friday, appeared to seal the deal for a rate increase at the Fed’s March 14-15 meeting — with Yellen indicating that a hike was coming barring a drastic disappointment in this week’s February jobs report.
All signs are pointing to further healthy job gains in February after a strong 227,000 additions in January. An index of last month’s service-sector activity, released Friday, recorded the fastest expansion in 16 months and a measure of employment also revealed sharper growth, possibly signaling stronger hiring. Meanwhile, initial jobless claims, a gauge of layoffs, have hovered near four decade lows. Economists expect the Labor Department on Friday to report a solid 185,000 job gains. And many economists expect wage growth, which was surprisingly sluggish in January, to rebound to 2.8% annually. With Federal Reserve officials increasingly signaling a rate hike at the Fed’s March 14-15 meeting is likely, it likely would take both weak employment growth and sluggish pay gains to prompt them to seriously consider standing pat.