With the US banking system in stable condition thanks to a $150 billion per week Fed liquidity drip+, traders are free to refocus on the data. And just in time for nonfarm payrolls.

Consensus is looking for 240,000 from March’s headline NFP print or, put differently, another robust read on a labor market which hasn’t shown any signs of fatigue despite 475bps worth of rate hikes in just 12 months.

Should NFP print ahead of estimates, it’d mark an 11th consecutive beat. That’d be a record going back a quarter century.

If Elizabeth Warren is concerned about a “dangerous man” “throwing people out of work,” she needn’t fret just yet.

Relatedly, JOLTS data due Tuesday will almost surely suggest there were nearly two open jobs for every American counted as officially unemployed as of the last business day of February. Job openings did fall in the last JOLTS report, but by just half as much as expected. Quits were the lowest in 20 months in January, but in a testament to just how anomalous these circumstances of ours really are, the 3.88 million Americans who voluntarily left a job that month would’ve counted as the most in series history pre-pandemic, and it wouldn’t have been close.

The last NFP report came packaged with an uptick in the unemployment rate and marginally higher participation. The Fed would very much like to see more of that, but what they’d really love is additional evidence to suggest wage growth is cooling. Consensus is looking for 4.3% from the YoY AHE print. If realized, that’d count as the coolest wage growth in 20 months, although it’d still be nearly a full percentage point higher than levels seen as consistent with 2% CPI. The market will eye the MoM reading more closely. It’s expected at 0.3%.

The figures come on the heels of a generally favorable personal income and spending report, which showed consumption cooled and core price growth moderated in February. “The upside surprise on core CPI combined with the underwhelming core-PCE inflation print will serve to deemphasize the wage update [in the jobs report] as the correlation appears to be over the medium-term and therefore less tradable within a given month’s data,” BMO’s Ian Lyngen and Ben Jeffery wrote. “That said, as a contributing factor to May rate hike expectations we anticipate the BLS release will be viewed in its entirety as opposed to on a component-by-component basis.”

I suppose this goes without saying, but 250,000 monthly NFP prints aren’t consistent with any kind of dovish pivot from the Fed — not in the face of inflation still running far above target. Last week’s PCE update still left both headline and core price growth on the Fed’s preferred gauge miles above acceptable levels. At least if you go by public remarks, officials seem to believe they’ve succeeded in stabilizing the banks, which means they’ll be keen to address “unfinished business” on the inflation front.

Certainly, the best quarter for the Nasdaq 100 in 11+ years doesn’t scream “cut rates!” and neither do 10.5 million job vacancies, which is what the JOLTS update is expected to show.

Mohamed El-Erian probably got it right late last week when he told Bloomberg TV that the Fed “will have a choice in the third quarter.” “Either crush the economy to get to 2%, change the 2% target — which they won’t do because they’ve missed it so much — or live with 3-4% inflation hoping that it’s stable and keep on promising there’s 2% down the road,” he went on. “I think the third choice is the most sensible one in this world of second best.”

Markets will hear from Bullard, Cook and Mester this week. NFP will be released on Good Friday, which means any kind of “surprise” would hit in an illiquid market. ISM manufacturing is Monday, ISM services Wednesday.