The Fed’s in their self-imposed communications blackout this week ahead of a September policy meeting where the Committee’s guaranteed to resume rate cuts after a long hiatus.

The question isn’t whether they’re going to cut, but by how much. For now, the odds of a 50bps move on the one year anniversary of last year’s half-point reduction seem long, but that could change on Tuesday.

As discussed in this week’s macro preview, a lot hangs on the outcome of the BLS’s preliminary annual benchmarking exercise which is expected to lop as many as a million jobs from total payroll growth in the year ended March.

This is a statistical two step: There’s a preliminary revision (this week) and then there’ll be a final revision early next year. The figure above shows you the history of preliminary revisions, and it reminds you that last year’s first pass at the exercise resulted in an 818,000 downward adjustment, the largest since 2009.

I’m not sure there’s an official “consensus” for this, but as far as I can tell, most banks expect a downward revision in excess of half a million. If you take that number and divide it by 12, you can say something like, “Monthly payrolls growth was XYZ weaker than initially reported on average.” Chris Waller, for example, said late last month that he expects the private NFP count will be “reduced by an average of about 60,000 a month.”

Depending on the outcome of this exercise, the odds of a 50bps cut on September 17 — when the Board will have three committed doves in Waller, Miki Bowman and Trump sock puppet Stephen Miran — could rise fairly dramatically. Or fall away entirely. A middle-of-the-road revision — say, -400,000 — would leave the matter undecided.

It’s with that in mind that Wall Street Journal “Fed whisperer” Nick Timiraos might be called upon to tip the Fed’s hand. Because God knows we can’t have traders flying blind into the FOMC statement next week. That sort of ambiguity’s anathema in the forward guidance era.

The figure above’s from SocGen’s Stephen Spratt. It’s annotated with three notable instances of Timiraos having to make the call during the communications blackout.

The September meeting’s priced as a done deal, but only at 25bps. If it’s going to be 50 instead, Jerome Powell may have to dial up Nick.

This is complicated by the late-week CPI release. To reiterate a point I’ve made at least four or five times already since the jobs report, the inflation print’s irrelevant for the 25bps cut. The Fed’s cutting on the 17th come hell or high core CPI.

But an upside surprise on Thursday that isn’t marginal (say, a 0.4% MoM core readout) could nix the 50bps idea if it prevents Bowman from committing, leaving only Waller and Miran in the half-point cut camp.

In any case, this could be irrelevant by Tuesday afternoon if the BLS revision is any semblance of benign, but if that adjustment is 600,000 or more, don’t be surprised if Timiraos tips 50.