All eyes will be on next Friday’s US labour market report. If this confirms last month’s data which showed annual wage inflation jumping to 2.9 per cent, market fears of higher interest rates might well intensify. Conversely, any drop in wage growth will bring big relief.
In truth, though, other figures might bring hints that global growth might be cooling down already.
In the eurozone, purchasing managers should confirm their flash report that service sector growth slowed slightly last month. And official figures from Germany, Italy and France, taken together, might suggest that industrial production growth is also slowing moderately – albeit from a rapid pace.