Economics
Jobs-Day Guide: Wages Expected to Warm Up as Payroll Gains Cool
- Unemployment rate probably fell to 3.9% in February from 4%
- Even so, a mostly solid report won’t budge a patient Fed
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America’s jobs engine may have cooled a bit last month, but wages probably heated up as U.S. companies struggled to fill positions in a tightening market.
Nonfarm payrolls likely increased by about 180,000, a still-solid pace though down from 304,000 in the prior month, while the jobless rate fell a tenth of a point to 3.9 percent -- near the lowest rate since 1969 -- according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg ahead of Friday’s Labor Department report.