The Fed is steering the economy.

When will it change course?

From Marketplace, I'm Sabrie Benashore in for David Brancaccio.

The US economy added 800,000 fewer jobs than we thought between the first quarter of last year and this year.

That is according to updated data from the Labor Department.

It's no crisis, but it does mean the labor market has indeed been cooling,

maybe faster than expected, and it's yet another reason people will be dissecting

every signal they can from the Federal Reserve on when it might cut interest rates.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will speak tomorrow at the Fed's annual Economic

Symposium which starts later today.

Marketplace is Nancy Marshall Gensler reports.

Investors are really hoping Powell will lay the groundwork for an interest rate cut at the next meeting of the Federal Open

Market Committee or FOMC in September, But Ryan Sweet, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, says

Powell won't tell us too much. I wouldn't hold your breath for a lot of clues on what the

outcome of the September meeting is or the

November or the December. He's not going to want a front run the rest of the effort, too.

The Fed released the minutes

show some FOMC members acknowledging that a case could be made

for cutting interest rates last month when they left rates unchanged.

The minutes also said the quote vast majority of the

committee members said that if the data continued to come in about as expected

it would likely be appropriate to cut rates at their next meeting.

...