By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Ultimately, as the Fed is going to have its May meeting this week, do you anticipate there’s anything that they would see in the data to actually signal that we could start to see some of those rate cuts be talked about at this juncture?
00:24 Speaker B
Well, thanks for having me on, uh, Brad and, uh, Madison. I think what’s going to happen here is it’s going to be somewhat of a boring meeting, uh, this week. I think what they’re going to probably do is use their speeches. They’re going to be all over, literally all over the world. The various policy makers will be giving speeches both in Europe domestically, and they’ll use those speeches to prepare markets to expect the first cut to come in June. So, no change obviously this week. Inflation still nagging, although we certainly saw some positive moves in what they call the Super Core. Uh, so core services, ex-housing, uh, that certainly is moving in the right direction. I think we see, we’ll see three cuts, a quarter cut in June, and then October, December.
02:04 Speaker A
Help me understand the state of the labor market right now, since you bring up some of the numbers that we got in the jobs report. Some of the uptick that we saw for things like warehousing, those were temporary roles that could potentially be part of a pull forward dynamic ahead of any negative impact of the trade war. To what extent do you think that there’s a discounting right now of a broader potential weakness in the labor market to come?
02:43 Speaker B
Well, I think last Friday’s report was probably a little bit misleading. So, remember, and I’ll address the, uh, the temporary workers, but also a hot topic is on the federal side. So, any federal worker that’s getting paid severance, uh, or, you know, taking an early pay cut or early leave, they’re still on that payroll. So, we’re probably going to see some impacts from the DOD cuts in upcoming reports. Didn’t really see much impact yet on federal. I think one thing that’s providing some stability is the hiring demand for healthcare services. That’s certainly not going to be temporary. But, granted, this report was probably a little hotter than what’s really happening, masking some of the slowdown in labor markets. I do think that the trend that we’ve seen really for the last year and a half, that the average pace of job gains is slowing. Uh, but as long as we stay above the 125k level, I think that’s communicating to investors that we’re seeing some stability despite the slowdown.