Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street brunch, our Sunday look ahead to this week's

market-moving events, along with the weekend's top news and analysis.

Hello, today is Sunday, March 2nd, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn.

The February jobs report arrives this week in a more doveish environment

than the January numbers. The figures arrive pre-market Friday as usual, with economists

expecting that non-farm payrolls rose by 150,000, and the unemployment rate stayed steady

at 4%. Average hourly earnings are forecast to have risen 0.3%. Following a relatively weight January

payrolls print and benign core PC

price index countering a hot CPI, the market is once again pricing in a quarter point Fed rate cut

in June and three cuts by the end of the year. But Wells Fargo economists noted this past week,

officials expressed the desire to hold rate steady on account of stalled inflation and increasing

uncertainty.

All told, the recent Fed speak supports our view that mounting upside inflation risks

will keep the FOMC on hold over the next several meetings.

Wall Street will also be looking for any impact on the data from the federal layoffs implemented

by Doge. Wells Fargo says federal payrolls will likely see a decline of 5,000 to 10,000

this time around. Decline of federal employment in the realm of 25,000 to 50,000 spread over the next

few months seems reasonable, they added, but from what we know now, the reductions in the size

of the federal workforce will not alter the overall trajectory of the labor market over this

year. Even considering

the noise and near-term headwinds to job growth, we would stress that federal civilian

employment makes up a small portion of total payrolls, 1.5% in the United States. Furthermore,

...