Marketmind: Markets freeze for jobless recession gauge

With investors trying to read recessionary warnings from softening U.S. labor market signals all week, the outsize importance of the November payrolls report to next week's Federal Reserve meeting has frozen frenetic markets in advance. It's hard to imagine the numerous employment soundings this week showing a loosening of the labor market will be contradicted by the overall employment report. The standing consensus forecasts are for a 180,000 rise in non-farm payrolls last month, an unchanged jobless rate at 3.9% and a cooling of annual wage growth to 4.0%.