On this is labor day, the songbook as a vehicle for communication.

I'm David Brancaccio on this labor day.

This is shaping up to be the month that interest rates go down for the first time

since the pandemic emergency. Guiding how far down

they go and how quickly they go down will be the jobs market. The key readings on hiring and

unemployment for the month just ended come on Friday morning.

Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genser has more.

Economists don't think the August jobs report will be as bad as July's

when unemployment ticked higher and way fewer jobs were created than

analysts expected.

EY senior economist Lydia Boussor thinks the August unemployment rate will actually fall.

Overall we're expecting this jobs report to provide a little bit of reassurance that the label market is not collapsing and that we're not seeing this downshift in label market conditions gathering a lot of momentum.

Remember, the Fed has two jobs, getting inflation to 2%, but also keeping as many people employed as possible.

Now that inflation appears to be getting under control, the Fed is turning more of its attention

to the labor market.

Boussore says, even if we get a good jobs report on Friday she still expects the

Fed to cut interest rates at its September meeting because the unemployment rate

has been creeping up over the past few months. Fed officials don't want to leave interest rates too high.

That could slow the economy too much and snuff out job growth.

I'm Nancy Marshall Genser for Marketplace.

In addition to the jobs report on Friday, this week also brings the latest look at

construction spending.

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