Mohamed El-Erian says the Federal Reserve needs to renew its focus on its fight against rising prices after September’s surprisingly hot jobs report served as a reminder that “inflation is not dead.”
His comments came after Friday’s numbers blew away estimates, triggering a jump in US stocks and bond yields. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 254,000 in September, the most in six months.
“This is not just a solid labor market, but if you take these numbers at face value, it’s a strong labor market late in the cycle,” El-Erian, the president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, told Bloomberg Television on Friday.
“For the Fed, it means push back much harder against pressure from the markets to put you in the single mandate box,” he added. “Enough talk about, ‘The Fed should only be concerned about maximum employment.’”
Investors rapidly slashed wagers on sharper Fed policy easing in November and December after the release. The data also showed the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 4.1%, while annual wage growth picked up to 4%.
Swaps traders are now factoring in a little over 50 basis points of interest-rate cuts from the US central bank before the end of the year, down from more than 60 on Thursday. The yield on policy-sensitive two-year Treasury yields surged after the release, trading more than 15 basis points higher at 3.86%.
“For markets, this is pushing back on overly aggressive expectations of rate cuts by the Fed,” said El-Erian, who’s also a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. “This will get the market closer to what’s likely.”