Tonight, the heavyweight non-farm payrolls report is coming! Concerns arise over a significant slowdown in US job growth, signaling an economic red alert

According to the Zhitong Finance and Economics APP, there are signs that the U.S. labor market is slowing down, and may even deteriorate, making the June non-farm payroll report more significant. The June non-farm payroll report will be released at 20:30 Beijing time on Friday, with economists expecting an addition of 200,000 jobs, lower than May's 272,000. So far, a total of 1.24 million new jobs have been added in 2024, a decrease of about 50,000 jobs per month compared to the same period last year.

From a historical perspective, the pace of job growth remains steady. However, there are signs that employment conditions may be weakening, possibly indicating broader economic softness in the future.

Nick Bunker, Director of Economic Research at Indeed Hiring Lab, said: "As this report is released, there is more uncertainty about the economic outlook than in the past few months. Specifically, I am more concerned about the unemployment rate, which has been slowly rising."

The U.S. unemployment rate in May rose slightly to 4%, reaching this threshold for the first time since January 2022, higher than 3.7% a year ago. Forecasts indicate that the unemployment rate will remain at this level.

Under normal circumstances, a 4% unemployment rate should be cause for celebration rather than concern. However, some economists are concerned about how the current unemployment rate compares to last year.

The May unemployment rate was 0.5 percentage points higher than the 12-month low of 3.5% set in July 2023, which could trigger a recession indicator called the "Sahm Rule". This rule suggests that when the three-month average unemployment rate is half a percentage point higher than the 12-month low, the economy will enter a recession.

While there is almost no data indicating an imminent recession, the trend in the unemployment rate is causing concern.

Bunker said: "If the unemployment rate continues to rise slowly as it has in the past, I don't think it means we are likely to trigger the Sahm Rule or any recession indicator based on the unemployment rate. That being said, the likelihood of this happening has increased, even if it is not the most likely outcome at the moment."

The U.S. economy slowed down in the first half of 2024. The annualized GDP growth rate for the first quarter was 1.4%, and the Atlanta Fed predicts a growth rate of only 1.5% for the second quarter.

In addition, inflation concerns persist, which may lead the Federal Reserve to maintain interest rates unchanged for a longer period.

Apart from the main employment and unemployment data, market participants and economists will also focus on several other key indicators.

Of concern is the discrepancy between the non-farm employment figures provided by institutions participating in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey and the number of working households in the reportAlthough institutional surveys show that the number of employed people has increased by about 2.8 million in the past 12 months, the household population used to calculate the unemployment rate has only increased by 376,000. Economists generally believe that institutional surveys are more reliable and less volatile because they cover a larger sample size, but this difference has attracted some attention.

In addition, as a measure of inflation, attention will be paid to working hours and average hourly wages.

Economists expect hourly wages in the United States to increase by 0.3% month-on-month and 3.9% year-on-year in June. If the outlook remains the same, this would mark the first time since June 2021 that the annual growth rate has fallen below 4%