James Smith, an ING Bank economist, said: “The key to the next Fed rate hike is data – and data don’t get much more important than the labour report.” The Dutch lender expects the US jobs figures, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to show “a respectable combination of higher wage growth and solid employment”.

Jobless claims data published last week, a measure of people filing for unemployment benefits, revealed a rebound from 247,000 to 257,000. Yet Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that the trend in claims remained “extraordinarily low”. He added that at such low levels, the data were consistent with a monthly US jobs gain in excess of 200,000.

RBC Capital Markets added that the claims numbers were “a very compelling data point” and signalled that, coupled with high numbers of job openings in the US economy, there exists “a very good pipeline for job growth”.