What to watch

Jobs Friday clashes with Fed’s March meeting

It’s Jobs Friday. That means the monthly Wall Street guessing game, “Will they or won’t they hike?” will kick off after the U.S. government lets the world know how many jobs the American economy created in February. The Federal Reserve, which raised shortterm interest rates for the first time in a decade back in December, meets March 15 to discuss interest-rate policy. While the Fed was hoping to continue hiking rates this year, they opted to keep rates unchanged in January. Since then, market turbulence, still-weak inflation readings and slowing global growth prompted the Fed to hint that they may have to dial back their rate-hike plans.

The Wall Street forecast is for 195,000 new jobs last month. So, is there a jobs number that could put a March rate increase back on the table or keep the Fed on hold indefinitely? “If we got a number above 250,000 or 275,000 the market would start to get more nervous. but I doubt the Fed would move,” said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Boston Private Wealth. “As far as putting the Fed on hold all year? A low such as 15,000 or 25,000 may do it, but that’s (not) likely.”