As Federal Reserve officials weigh whether and when to cut interest rates this year, they expect to see evidence that the labor market is gradually cooling but with unemployment remaining low.

Friday’s jobs report contained bad news on all fronts.

According to the report, both hiring and wage growth accelerated in May. That could raise fears that the labor market remains too hot to fully control inflation.

But unemployment rose slightly, reaching 4 percent for the first time in more than two years. That suggests high interest rates could be starting to take their toll in the form of greater job losses.

Policymakers will meet next week to weigh conflicting signals from the economy. They are widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged at around 5.3 percent, their highest level in decades. The same applies to their next meeting, in July.

What will happen after that is much less certain. Investors believe there is about a 50 percent chance the Federal Reserve will cut rates at its September meeting, but those odds have steadily worsened in recent months as inflation has proven more persistent than expected. the authorities expected.

Federal Reserve officials are paying particular attention to wage growth, which has fallen since the frenetic days of 2021, when companies tried to hire workers quickly as the economy reopened from the pandemic. But wages are still rising significantly faster than before the pandemic, and while policymakers don’t believe that is the main cause of recent price increases, they worry that it will be difficult to fully control inflation unless wage growth will slow further.

“If there are wage increases greater than productivity would justify, then there will be inflationary pressure,” Jerome H. Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said at a news conference after the central bank’s last meeting, in May. He said policymakers had “seen progress” on wages, but that “we have ways to move forward there.”

Data released Friday showed that average hourly earnings, a measure of wage growth, rose 4.1 percent in May from a year earlier. The pace was faster than in April and faster than expected. That, combined with job growth that was also much stronger than expected, could make Fed officials more worried that the labor market remains too hot and therefore more reluctant to cut interest rates. interest.

But the increase in unemployment could give some authorities pause. So far, the Federal Reserve’s rate-hike campaign has brought very little pain in the form of job losses, and the unemployment rate remains low even after May’s slight rebound. But historically, once the unemployment rate increases even modestly, it tends to continue increasing.