Fortune tellers have crystal balls, economists have the shipping industry.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabrie Beneshore and for David Brancaccio.

More on shipping in a sec.

First, the Federal Reserve meets in two weeks to decide, among other things, what to do with the country's interest rates. The interest rates that they use to manage their double task of controlling inflation and promoting job

creation in the economy. Fed officials thinking will be guided by economic

data on those two things. How's inflation doing? How are jobs doing? Some of that data is

rolling in this week. Joining us to talk about it is Julia Coronado,

founder of macro policy perspectives and a professor at UT Austin. Hi Julia.

Good morning. Last Friday we learned inflation getting close to normal 2.5%.

This Friday we hear how many jobs were created.

Why is this Friday particularly a big deal?

There's two reasons. One is last month's employment report was surprisingly weak.

The question is how much of that was a hurricane effect from Hurricane Barrel, do we get

some bounce back, or do we continue weakening? And the second reason that's so important is because

this is coming right ahead of the Fed's September meeting where they've already told us they're going to cut rates.

The question is by how much and the employment report will really be the driver of that.

The labor market has been cooling, but the question is, is it just cooling like back down to

room temperature or is it actually getting cold, which are two different things?

Is there a sense yet of which way it could go?

Well that's why the data will be so critical.

Chair Powell in his speech drew a line in the sand.

We don't want to see any more weakening.

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