The central bank will continue to pay close attention to the state of the labor market, specifically on wages, as it focuses on defeating inflation, but there’s only so much that labor data can reveal about price increases. Mainly, it’s that wage figures are great at gauging inflation’s progress, but they’re lousy at forecasting its future. Financial markets have shifted back to a “bad news is good news” way of perceiving economic data and will continue to react to labor data, but ultimately, it’s the actual inflation data that matter most to the Fed. The issue of labor figures in forecasting inflation lies with productivity data. The Federal Reserve releases August data on industrial production.

---

Persons: Austan Goolsbee, Raphael Bostic, ”, Quincy Krosby, ” Agron Nicaj, it’s, Anna Cooban, ” James Athey Organizations: CNN Business, Bell, DC CNN, Federal Reserve, Fed, Chicago Fed, Bloomberg, Atlanta Fed, Financial, LPL Financial, CNN, Oracle, National Federation of Independent Business, National Statistics, US Labor Department, Adobe, European Central Bank, US Commerce Department, China’s National Bureau of Statistics, Lennar Homes, The University of Michigan Locations: Washington, Saudi Arabia