My inbox is already starting to fill up with predictions and demands that the Fed accelerate the pace of “normalization” because today’s jobs report was better than expected. But the case for wait-and-see actually remains as strong as ever, and maybe a bit stronger.

There are, as I’ve tried to explain, two key points for Fed policy. The first is that we don’t know how much slack there is in the labor market. The second is that the consequences of overestimating slack and waiting too long to raise rates would be relatively minor, while the costs of underestimating slack and hiking rates too soon could be immense.

On the first point: we really, really don’t know how much slack there is. Don’t show me your new estimation method and claim that it proves that there is x percent of slack — there are lots of clever people doing clever estimates, they don’t agree, and nobody really believes in econometrics anyway unless it tells them what they want to hear. (Sorry, but that’s reality.) We really won’t know until after the fact, if and when we finally see a notable pickup in inflation, and in particular in wages.

On the second point: if the Fed waits too long, inflation might pick up for a while, and getting it back down to target would hurt (although the target really should be higher.) But that’s minor compared with the alternative, of raising rates too soon and then finding that we’ve entered a deflationary trap that’s really, really hard to exit. If you’re at the Fed, would you rather wake up and discover that core inflation has risen to 3 percent or that you’ve become Mario Draghi?

So, what did we learn about inflation from the latest employment report? Here’s wage growth:

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Feel that wage-price spiral!

If you’re puzzled that a falling unemployment rate hasn’t translated into faster wage growth, well, that just reinforces the point that we truly don’t know how much slack there is. And does anyone think that wage growth was wildly excessive before the financial crisis? If you don’t, then you should believe that we need an extended period of tight labor markets just to get back to where we were.

There is nothing in this report to suggest that it makes sense to hike rates any time soon. In fact, I find it very hard to understand why anyone thinks rates should rise even in 2015.