Fed seen on track to cut rates next week and in December

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Inflation at 2.1% by Fed's targeted measure; goal is 2%

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Employment cost index falls to lowest in more than 3 years

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Underlying inflation, election cloud 2025 rates outlook

By Ann Saphir

Oct 31 (Reuters) -

With inflation now only just above the Federal Reserve's 2% target and

wage pressures easing

, U.S. central bankers are widely expected to cut short-term borrowing costs next week in an effort to keep the labor market from further cooling.

But an uptick in underlying price pressures evident in data released on Thursday, what's likely to be a confusing monthly read on the labor market on Friday, and uncertainty over the outcome of the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election make the road for further interest rate reductions in December and especially next year less clear. Inflation by the Fed's targeted measure, the year-over-year increase in the personal consumption expenditures price index, dropped to 2.1% in September, from 2.3% in August, a Commerce Department report on Thursday showed. The Fed aims for 2% inflation. A separate report from the Labor Department showed the broad wage-growth gauge known as the employment cost index rose 0.8% in the third quarter from the previous quarter, the smallest increase since the second quarter of 2021. A rise in labor costs was among the factors that had alarmed Fed policymakers in late 2021, prompting the central bank's pivot to tighter policy to head off an upward spiral of rising wages and prices.

The fact that wage growth eased last quarter even as

the economy expanded

solidly may give Fed policymakers added confidence that inflation won't resurge, and a green light for interest rate cuts in their last two meetings of the year.

"We view the data overall as suggesting that upside inflation risks from a strong economy and labor market remain to date muted, and while the Fed and investors will need to keep this under ongoing review given the strength in the data, it is fundamentally constructive for risk and for the 'soft landing,'" Evercore ISI Vice Chairman Krishna Guha wrote in a note.

A soft landing refers to a scenario in which inflation cools but the labor market remains healthy and the economy avoids recession, a historically rare occurrence but one that so far has played out. Futures contracts settling to the Fed's policy rate ratified that view, putting the chances of a 25-basis-point cut at the central bank's Nov. 6-7 meeting at about 94%, and giving a second 25-basis-point cut in December about a 70% chance. The Fed last month lowered its policy rate by half of a percentage point to the 4.75%-5.00% range, in large part because policymakers felt that keeping it high even as inflation was falling could harm employment.

ELECTION IMPACT

The release on Friday of the Labor Department's monthly employment report is likely to show the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% in October, economists polled by Reuters projected. They forecast that 113,000 jobs were added in October, which would be a sharp slowdown from September.

Fed policymakers, however, are expected to take little signal from that employment data, because recent hurricanes and an ongoing strike at Boeing likely subtracted as much as 100,000 jobs in the month. That impact will be seen as only temporary rather than a sudden deterioration in the labor market.

Other data released on Thursday, however, may mitigate the confidence in a benign inflation trajectory. Underlying price pressures, as tracked by the core PCE price index that excludes volatile food and energy items, ticked up to 2.7% from a year earlier, higher than the 2.6% economists had expected and matching the prior month's increase. The Fed watches core PCE closely to help forecast where inflation is heading, and further increases could raise doubts about the wisdom of easing monetary policy further. "We believe the Fed will pause any rate cuts in December amid fears about a reacceleration of inflation," Michael Landsberg, chief investment officer at Landsberg Bennett Private Wealth Management, wrote in a note. And if former U.S. President Donald Trump retakes the White House and voters return full control of Congress to his fellow Republicans on Tuesday, as betting markets project, promised tariff increases, tax cuts and mass deportations of migrants could bolster wage and inflation pressures, analysts say.

Financial markets in recent weeks have been pricing in higher inflation in five years.

"The election poses upside risks to the baseline forecast for medium-term wage growth," Bernard Yaros, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Additional reporting by Lisa Pauline Mattackal; Editing by Christina Fincher, Andrea Ricci and Paul Simao)