It’s a data-heavy week in the US, where a whirlwind of indicators are expected to show the world’s largest economy is resilient despite a year and a half of aggressive rate hikes from the Fed.

August payrolls is obviously the marquee report. Consensus expects 170,000 from the NFP headline.

If borne out, that’d mark a continuation of what it’s fair to call a welcome trend of smaller headline job gains. The Fed desperately needs the labor market to soften, and it seemingly has — at the margins anyway. 170,000 would still count as a healthy pace of hiring.

Average hourly earnings are expected to come in at 3.5% YoY and 0.3% MoM. If you’re an equity bull, you don’t want those to overshoot.

The BLS’s preliminary benchmark revision (released last week) suggested total nonfarm employment as of March was 306,000 lower than originally reported, not an especially meaningful total, below some estimates and immaterial for the macro narrative. But I felt compelled to mention it.

This week’s jobs data, including and especially JOLTS, is a key litmus test at a time when officials and markets are hoping for additional evidence to support the contention that notwithstanding the economy’s befuddling fortitude, things are at least cooling around the edges. You know the story: It’s nice that things are going well, but at this juncture, good news could easily be bad news in the context of a Fed that’s still inclined to a hawkish demeanor with core inflation running nowhere near target.

As documented extensively in the latest weekly+ and on countless occasions over the past year, US economic outperformance argues for a higher neutral rate, but Jerome Powell was noncommittal on the issue during a predictably anticlimactic address in Jackson Hole last week. The debate will remain topical and traders will be especially keen to parse the distribution of the long run dots in the September SEP. The incoming data will be viewed through that lens.

Markets will assess the JOLTS figures for signs that vacancies are falling. That’s the key to the soft landing narrative. Posed as a question: How much of the normalization burden can be outsourced to the headline JOLTS print? “Immaculate disinflation” starts with an outsized decline in job openings against no discernible increase in the unemployment rate — fewer vacancies but no actual job losses. Many (most) economists argued that such a benign outcome was wishful thinking at best. And yet, it’s working out. So far. Whether it’s sustainable is an open question.

The openings to unemployed ratio, a metric keenly eyed by Fed officials, is falling. The hope is that it continues to fall. As the figure above makes clear, progress is uneven. There are lingering concerns about matching efficiency and there’s a long way to go. But at least for now, things are going as well as could reasonably be expected.

Traders will also watch ADP’s report on private sector US hiring, which is still fully capable of moving markets and has demonstrated a willingness to diverge meaningfully from the NFP headline. Challenger job cuts for August are due Thursday, as are personal spending and income figures for July, along with an update on PCE prices.

Consensus wants to see another 0.2% increase on the MoM core PCE gauge. Anything hotter than that would be unwelcome news for obvious reasons.

The second estimate of Q2 GDP is on deck too. That’ll garner some attention. The advance read showed the economy expanded at a much brisker pace than expected from April through June. It’s obviously backward looking, but in the current context, any meaningful revisions would probably constitute “news.” The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker suggests the economy is still steaming along, even as preliminary PMIs for August told a different story.

Speaking of PMIs, we’ll get ISM manufacturing this week. Consensus expects a 10th straight contractionary headline print. In addition, Tuesday brings updates on the two national home price indexes, as well as Conference Board confidence. Pending home sales are due mid-week. Fed speakers include Barr, Bostic, Collins and Mester.

All of this (and any unscheduled news) will hit into a thin, pre-Labor Day market.