Blowout jobs: A headache for Federal Reserve, or a back-to-2019 gift?

The dissonance in the data will be a key puzzle for policymakers to resolve as they plot their next interest rate moves

A blowout January employment report and continued record numbers of job openings have left the US Federal Reserve with a growing dilemma of whether to take its cue about future inflation from a labor market that seems to remain on fire or take solace in the fact that, at the same time, wage growth continues to cool.
 
Even as firms added more than half a million jobs last month, the growth in average hourly earnings fell to 4.4 per cent from 4.8 per cent the month before, continuing a decline from around 6 per cent last spring.
 
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