These days, waiting for the Federal Reserve to lower its benchmark interest rate is a bit like waiting for Godot: the arrival date for the long-anticipated monetary policy move keeps getting pushed into the future.

Financial markets scaled back their expectations for rate cuts again last week after a report on job growth showed the labor market staying unexpectedly healthy in May. The labor market's resilience ⛦takes some pressure off the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to boost the economy and prevent a severe increase in unemployment.

On Monday, investors seemed sure that the jobs report indicated the central bank would not cut the 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:federal funds rate soon, according to the CME Group's FedWatch tool, which forecasts rate movements based on fed funds futures trading data. Investors were pricing in an 83% chance the Fed's policy committee would hold its rates steady in the June and July meetings. That's up from 76% a week ago and 40% a month ago.

Fed officials themselves have 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:indicated they're in no hurry to chop interest rates, which would put downward pressure on interest rates on all kinds of loans. In contrast, President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded the Fed cut rates: he's asked officials to lower rates by an 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:entire percentage point, rather than their usual quarter-point increments, and criticized the central bank for not cutting rates sooner.

The 🐽outlook for interest rates has changed dramatically since late 2024 when Fed officials went on a rate-cutting spree, lowering the key fed funds rate a perc𒀰entage point over three meetings.

In January, the Fed declined to cut rates again, leaving them high enough to be deemed "restrictive. " This means borrowing costs are high enough to drag on the economy and downwardly affect inflation. Fed officials have held off on more rate cuts out of fear that the tariffs Trump has imposed this year could push up prices and set off a fresh round of inflation.

Since then, expectations for when rate cuts could resume have been on a roller coaster ride as financial markets and forecasters try to predict the outcome of the trade war: if tariffs drag down the job market enough to threaten a wave of mass layoffs, the Fed could step in and cut rates to help the economy. But if inflation remains above the Fed's target of a 2% annual rate, the Fed could keep rates higher for longer to force it down.

Some economists predict the Fed will be forced to cut sooner rather than later. Economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics, for instance, downplayed the significance of the healthy job growth figures in May, noting that recent jobs reports have been heavily revised downward. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly revises its monthly jobs reports as new survey data comes in. The May jobs report downwardly revised job growth for the previous two months by 95,000, for instance.

"Mr. Trump’s criticism of the Fed’s current stasis will likely be proven right," economists led by Samuel Tombs, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon, wrote in a commentary.

Pantheon expects the Fed to make three quarter-point cuts before the end of the year as the job market unravels.

At the other end of the spectrum are forecasters at Deutsche Bank, who expect the Fed to hold off on rate cuts until December and make just one cut in 2025. DB's economists, using a proprietary AI tool, said speeches by Fed officials have become more "hawkish" lately, suggesting policymakers are more concerned with fighting inflation than they are with saving jobs.