Federal Reserve prepares to cut interest rates for a third time this year

The Federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates Wednesday for the third time this year.

Traders overwhelmingly expect a relatively small 0.25% cut, the same size as the last two cuts.

But the Fed’s rate-setting meeting in Washington is taking place in the fog of a data blackout, the result of the prolonged federal government shutdown this fall.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the September jobs report, but the October report was canceled altogether, and the November report remains a work in progress.

The delayed November jobs report is set be released Dec. 16.

Like the jobs report, October’s consumer price index was canceled. And all-important November inflation data will also arrive late, on Dec. 18.

Meanwhile, alternative data has consistently pointed to a slowing labor market. The payroll processor ADP’s most recent monthly private jobs report showed small businesses having shed a whopping 120,000 jobs in November.

Nationwide, a net 32,000 jobs were lost, ADP said.

That leaves members of the Fed’s Open Market Committee largely in the dark as they try to balance the prospect of a slowing labor market and stubborn inflation.

One of the few economic data releases from the government since the shutdown was a reading of the Fed’s favorite measure of inflation, personal consumption expenditures, or PCE.

It showed that PCE hit 2.8% in September from a year ago, up from 2.7% in August and 2.6% in July by that same measure. But even that data was already months old.

The report said consumer spending had been flat in September. Even when volatile food and energy costs are excluded, spending was up only 0.2%.

Another government data point, the job openings and labor turnover survey, or JOLTS, was released Tuesday morning. But it did not offer a more optimistic set of numbers.

“Very low-churn dynamics of the labor market continue, with the hiring rate back at the low of 3.2% and the quit rate falling to a new low of 1.8%,” analysts at Citigroup noted.

The JOLTS report also showed that the delayed October jobs report coming Tuesday is likely to have a 65,000-worker drag in it “from buyout offers given to federal workers in the spring.”

There are also the potential headwinds created by President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last month in a case challenging Trump’s authority under an emergency law to impose sweeping tariffs. Justices could issue an opinion in the case any day.

Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO Charlie Scharf said Tuesday that his bank’s business customers “continue to do quite well” but that tariffs continue to be a source of short-term pressure.

Wells Fargo is the country’s fourth-largest bank as ranked by deposits, according to Fed data.

“They’re encouraged long-term by what tariffs will mean for them to be able to be competitive, but it has created pressure for them in the shorter-term,” Scharf said at Goldman Sachs’ U.S. Financial Services Conference in New York City.

That pressure “certainly looks like it’s held back hiring” and “some level of investment” from businesses while they are “very much focused on their own costs.”

“So as opposed to really investing for growth at this point, while they have to readjust for what the tariffs mean for their cost base, they’ve been preserving margin by focusing on cost,” he said.

JPMorgan Chase executive Marianne Lake was also asked about the state of the consumer during her remarks at the conference.

“I would characterize the environment as being a little bit more fragile,” Lake said.

From her perch as CEO of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan, Lake has insight into the more than 85 million consumers and 7 million small businesses her bank serves.

“As we look at the data right now, the data looks good, consumers look resilient, small businesses are resilient, but there’s less capacity to weather an incremental stress,” she said.