September is on the table
After six years of interest rates near zero, the recovery is at a point where some economists are convinced an interest rate hike is possible as soon as this month.
On Friday, we got the last major report for the data-dependent Fed before its September 16-17 meeting.
The August jobs report showed that the economy added 173,000 jobs. This was below the consensus call for 217,000. However, August tends to first disappoint and then get revised higher. Also encouraging was that job gains for the prior two months were revised higher by a combined 44,000.
Also, the unemployment rate declined to a seven-year low of 5.1%, below what economists had forecast. This placed the gauge in the 5.2% - 5.0% range the Federal Reserve considers "full employment."
This report, combined with several other economic indicators, added to evidence that the economy is ripe for lift off.
Chris Rupkey at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi wrote in a note to clients Friday:
"Since they met in July and added the word 'some' to some further improvement needed to hike rates, the economy has delivered ... Far too many business ventures, construction projects, corporate dreams are hurdling because money is free. We've waited long enough. The economy is normal, and interest rates deserve to be too."
However, there's still a huge chunk of the market that thinks the Fed should wait, and on Friday afternoon, Fed fund futures reflected just a 32% chance that September is on the table. The odds for a December hike were more than 50%.
But the folks on Wall Street who agree are betting on this month have set their eyes beyond Friday's jobs report, and that even with the recent stock market volatility won't prevent the Fed from pulling the trigger.
Here's the thing about the stock market panic: There's isn't much the Fed can do to completely prevent that, especially if, as some have suggested, it's being driven by concern about slowing foreign economies.
Citi's global head of G10 FX strategy Steve Englander writes: "If Fed were meeting today I would say 55-60% chance that they would go for a hike and hope that the accompanying dovish commentary would ease the financial market stress."
In other words, with all the nervousness about weakness in China and elsewhere, the Fed can only hope that their next move comes with minimal damage.
And there's no guarantee that China's economy would have improved by December, and markets not tanking.
If there's one thing the jobs report on its own did, it added to the uncertainty. Goldman Sachs economists called the report "a mix of hits and misses," and maintained their call for liftoff in December or later.
In a note Friday, Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg outlined the case for holding rates, if that's what the Fed chooses to do:
"If I was a dove on the Fed and I wanted to make a domestic-oriented point for staying on the sidelines, I would showcase a 5.1% jobless rate that is still not generating any meaningful upward pressure on per-worker pay packet, and draw the conclusion that the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) may in fact be much closer to 4% than 5% and, as such, there is far too much spare capacity in the labor market to warrant a rate hike any time soon, with or without the acute market volatility and weakness of late."
But in a speech before the jobs report, Richmond Fed president Jeffrey Lacker, a noted Fed hawk, said: "Unemployment is close to pre-recession levels, real GDP growth has been slow but steady, and inflation is tracking our objective. I am not arguing that the economy is perfect, but nor is it on the ropes, requiring zero interest rates to get it back into the ring."
And so, where the Fed is concerned, it's not really about the jobs report, which on its own was solid.
The progress of the US economy shows that it's simply not in a zero interest rate economy anymore.