Fed Rate-Hike Forecasts Raised at JPMorgan, Evercore on Blowout Jobs Report
2022.08.08 19:30
Fed Rate-Hike Forecasts Raised at JPMorgan, Evercore on Blowout Jobs Report
(Bloomberg) — Friday’s blowout jobs report spurred economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), Evercore ISI and LH Meyer to say bigger US interest-rate increases are now in store this year, with Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C). seeing a risk of a 1 percentage-point hike in September.
Michael Feroli of JPMorgan and Derek Tang of LH Meyer now expect a 75 basis-point increase at the Federal Reserve’s Sept. 20-21 meeting, compared with 50 basis-point calls before. And Evercore analysts led by Krishna Guha see an extra quarter percentage point this year, taking the upper bound of the target rate to 3.75% by December.
US employers added 528,000 jobs last month, more than all estimates, the unemployment rate matched a five-decade low of 3.5% and wage growth accelerated, the Labor Department said Friday. The data add impetus for the Federal Open Market Committee to match the 75 basis-point moves it made in June and July as it works to cool an inflation rate that’s running at a 40-year high.
“The inflation worries motivating the Fed will only be heightened by this jobs report,” Feroli wrote. The “numbers should mollify recession fears but amplify concerns that the Fed has a lot more work to do, and we now think a 75 basis-point hike in September looks likely.”
Guha cited “recent strength in core inflation, wages and hiring, as well as the recent easing of financial conditions, which we think will be viewed as premature by the Fed.”
Citigroup economists led by Andrew Hollenhorst wrote that the strong jobs report and rising wages “make a 75 basis-point hike in September very likely and raise the potential for further super-sized increases.”
“Our base case remains for a 75 basis-point hike in September but we would not be too surprised by a 100 basis-point hike if core inflation comes in stronger than expected,” he wrote.
LH Meyer’s Tang said the firm now sees rate increases ending at 4.25% instead of 4%.
Fed officials will also consider one more employment print and two consumer-price index readouts before their September meeting.
The July data on consumer prices comes out on Wednesday; economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the index probably rose 0.2% from a month earlier, the least since January 2021. The so-called core measure, which strips out energy and food, likely climbed 0.5%, based on the median estimate in the survey.
On an annual basis, price growth probably decelerated to 8.7% from 9.1% in the prior month, according to the median forecast.
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