Friday’s jobs report for February assuaged those concerns somewhat. Investors homed in on slower wage growth and an increase in unemployment, in part because more people are coming back to the labor force, two data points that suggest the Fed’s effort to slow the economy and rein in inflation may be working.Some analysts said Friday’s employment data would take the pressure off the Fed when it met this month, and bets in financial markets tilted back toward a smaller, quarter-point rate increase instead of a half-point raise, which had been favored earlier in the week.“I think most would agree that won’t happen,” Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco, said of the possibility of a larger rate increase in March.However, others were …
