Tomorrow we will get the employment data for February. The market expects +200k (in the range of 125-286k - Refinitive consensus).
Payrolls report is probably the only data (apart from CPI) that can practically move the market - at least the rates/bonds market. Figure 1 shows the 1st tier data - i.e. CPI Inflation and Payrolls for the last two months against the 10-year US Treasury bond yield.
The reading for December was already hawkish, and in January the labor market was really red hot - both in the number of new job addition and in terms of wage inflation – see Figure 2.
Other data, also important for the debt market, do not have such a significant impact on the change in the trend in 10-year bond yields – see Figure 3.
Yesterday, the JOLTS report showed a small decline in Job Openings for the entire market (total private, vacancy rate was unchanged as a result). Yet what the market "didn't notice" was that vacancy rates increased in 3 of the 4 sectors responsible for the largest employment growth in the monthly employment report (Figure 4) - the labor market remains quite strong…
Today we got the next Initial Claims data (no major changes) and the Challenger report (also unchanged vs January - but the level of layoffs is relatively high: 84.6k in February vs 82.3k in January) – see Figure 5.
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