October’s long-delayed count of job openings comes out tomorrow. The data will certainly help the Federal Reserve as it meets mid-week to set interest rates. As mentioned before, you can take a quarter-point rate cut to the bank because, the reality is while government data is the gold standard, and there’s still a lot of catching up to do there, we do know a lot about how the economy has been doing and where it might be heading. 

Here’s what is known: Inflation has been stubbornly hanging around 2.8% for months, above the Federal Reserve's 2% target. Meanwhile, key areas of the labor market are showing signs of weakness.

“So if you look at the Black unemployment rate that's been rising pretty steadily over the last few months, young workers, their unemployment rate has been rising over the last year, almost two years,” said Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute. 

She said that can indicate things to come for the broader labor market. For the October report on job openings due out tomorrow, Gould will look closely at the rate of new hires, which has been falling. 

“The hires rate is about where we were in the aftermath of the Great Recession. So think 2013, 2014. Not a very strong economy,” she said.

But the labor market isn’t the Federal Reserve’s only concern it also works to keep prices stable. On that front, Aditya Bhave at BofA Global Research said the Fed may soon have something new to worry about and there’s a wonky economic term for it: reflation. 

“In reflation, you have more money, and the risk is that everybody else has more money as well, and so that might drive prices up,” Bhave said.

Where’s all that money coming from? New tax breaks.

“You're going to get $100 billion in consumer stimulus from the big, beautiful bill,” Bhave said.

That means tax cuts for workers who get overtime and on tips. 

“Roughly $65 billion is going to hit in the form of larger than expected tax refunds,” he said.

For now, the Federal Reserve appears more worried about the labor market said Kyle Rodda at Capital.com. He said a quarter point cut this week is all but certain. 

“I think the really critical issue at this Fed meeting, perhaps not so much if the Fed cuts or not, but it's the kind of color around the cut,” Rodda said.

As in what Chair Jerome Powell says in the aftermath. This time, Rodda expects to hear that a December cut doesn’t mean a January cut.