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[US October Non-Farm Payrolls Preview: Job Market Stabilizing, Wage Growth Still Lagging Inflation] 1. The US labor market has been largely stable over the past six months, and the October non-farm payrolls report is not expected to break this trend. JOLTS job openings, weekly initial jobless claims, and the ISM survey all point to a state of "low hiring, low layoffs." Economists' consensus expects 62,000 new jobs in October, higher than the Bureau of Labor Statistics' preliminary estimate of 29,000 for September; the unemployment rate is expected to remain at 4.2%. 2. Dan North, chief economist at Allianz Trade North America, said that the consensus forecast is still not encouraging enough, but the current unemployment rate is at a historical low, and fewer new jobs may be sufficient. He pointed out that the labor force participation rate may be more telling than the unemployment rate; the participation rate rose slightly to 61.8% in September from 61.6% in August, but is still lower than the 62.5% projected for September 2025. 3. The Chicago Fed's real-time unemployment rate model estimates that the October unemployment rate may have slightly decreased to 4.14% from 4.18% in September, rounded to 4.1%. The model shows that the layoff rate remains low at 2.01%, compared to 2.03% previously; the hiring rate has improved slightly to 46.18%, compared to 45.48% previously. 4. Wage growth is expected to continue to lag behind inflation. Market consensus expects average hourly earnings to rise 0.3% month-over-month in October, higher than September's 0.1%; and 2.9% year-over-year, lower than September's 3.0%. In contrast, the overall PCE inflation rate was 3.6% in September. The gap between inflation and wage growth is eroding consumer purchasing power. 5. North points out that inflation has become "very sticky, with little change over the past few months." Given the stable labor market, the Fed will continue to monitor inflation. In this rate hike cycle, the Fed only raised rates once in September; he stated that such a single rate hike by the Fed is very rare. 6. Salem Abraham, president of Abraham Trading Company, believes that raising interest rates cannot solve current inflation because sticky inflation is more related to energy costs than labor costs; even if the Fed triples interest rates, it cannot prevent wars or lower energy prices. 7. North believes that inflation is spreading to other areas, with energy prices spilling over into core inflation, and tariff shifting also having an impact. This is precisely the problem the Fed needs to address through interest rate hikes. However, since last Saturday, crude oil prices have fallen about 14% from their recent high of $104.99 per barrel, with Brent crude trading around $99.67 per barrel in Asian trading on Friday. Coupled with declining US Treasury yields and weakness in technology stocks, traders have lowered their probability of a December rate hike from 82.7% on Wednesday to 68%.