US Dollar: Labor focus softens – Commerzbank

Commerzbank’s Volkmar Baur notes that the US Nonfarm Payrolls release is unlikely to have the market impact it once did, even as recent JOLTS data point to improving hiring and fewer layoffs. He argues that higher volatility in payrolls and the Federal Reserve’s current focus on inflation rather than jobs reduce the significance of today’s report for the Dollar.

Jobs data seen less decisive

"As a preview, we already got the JOLT survey on Tuesday. And that certainly gives reason to hope for a fairly positive job market. The hiring rate in the US has risen slightly but steadily over the past few months, while the layoff rate has declined slightly. Taken together, this points to somewhat faster job growth."

"With the end of the Iran conflict (at least from the market’s perspective - it no longer seems interested in it), the US labor market is once again coming into a bit more focus for the fx markets. However, I don’t believe that today's numbers will come close to having the importance reports in the past once had."

"At the moment, therefore, it is somewhat more difficult to distinguish between signals and “noise” in the labor market based on NFPs. And that is why it could well be that the market (much like Kevin Warsh) won’t be looking quite so closely today."

(This article was created with the help of an Artificial Intelligence tool and reviewed by an editor.)