With today’s data showing the US inflation rate slowing to 2.5 per cent, conditions in America’s labour market remain all-important for the 25 vs 50 basis point rate cut debate facing the Federal Reserve next week.

Last Friday’s non-farm payroll numbers suffered from the drumroll both markets and the media had given it. The +142k jobs in August were slightly weaker than expected. It sparked a blue or gold dress-esque debate: some considered it strong enough, others emphasised that the earlier summer jobs numbers had been revised down, and that last month’s number could be too.

On balance, markets were neutral, leaving a 25 bps first cut priced in. FT Alphaville has often noted that there is a lot of noise in the NFP data, particularly following the pandemic. Here is our recent explainer. So, taking Jay Powell’s advice to look at the “totality of data”, we pulled out six charts that help put last week’s NFP numbers in context: