There’s really only one big question on the minds of Federal Reserve VIPs as they huddle this week to assess the U.S. economy: Has the jobs market really deteriorated?

Even after May’s paltry 38,000 gain in new jobs, Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen certainly doesn’t think so. “The overall labor market situation has been quite positive,” she said in a major speech a few days after the May jobs report.

Still, the small increase in jobs in May and a lackluster gain in April is probably enough to keep the Fed from raising interest rates at its June meeting. The Fed might even hold off until the end of the summer, defying expectations as recently as few weeks ago that a rate hike was imminent.

Upbeat reports this week on retail sales and home construction might ease any creeping doubt. Consumers are usually quick to retreat if they sense trouble. If Americans keep shopping and builders keep building, it will be a sign the economy continues to expand at a moderate pace.

The U.S. is on track to grow 2.5% in the second quarter, three times as fast as in the first three months of the year, according to economists polled by MarketWatch. Consumers are leading the way.

The sharp slowdown in hiring in May and April, what’s more, is contradicted by other data that show little or no change in the health of the labor market.

Read: U.S. workers are less in danger of being laid off than any time in modern history

The percentage of eligible American workers collecting unemployment benefits, for instance, fell to a record low in early June. Job openings are at a record in high. Many businesses big and small claim they have trouble finding qualified workers. And wages are rising at the fastest rate in years, perhaps a sign that scattered labor shortages are finally forcing companies to sweeten the pot.

“Sooner or later a tightening labor market is going to come home to roost,” said Peter Hooper, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities. “The law of supply and demand has not been repealed.”

Inevitably, higher wages and a shrinking supply of available workers are bound to cause hiring to slow after five straight years in which the economy added more than 2 million new jobs.

“It’s just now that we are reaching that point,” said Kevin Logan, chief U.S. economist at HSBC.

Yet most economists don’t expect job creation to just fall off a cliff, like it appeared to do in May. They expect hiring to spring back in the summer and then taper off gradually over the next year.

What’s emerged as a wild card is the highly unpredictable 2016 presidential election.

Businessman Donald Trump has espoused a mish-mash of economic policies that include some ideas corporate executives find downright dangerous, such as the threat of a trade war with China. On the other side Hillary Clinton has adopted some of the left-wing rhetoric of rival Bernie Sanders to capture the Democratic nomination.

“What I’ll say is that the election is scaring the crap out of me,” said Richard Moody, the normally mild-mannered chief economist at Regions Financial.

Some economists believe the slowdown in hiring might stem in part from businesspeople waiting to see how the election unfolds. There’s no reason hiring should soften so abruptly when the broader U.S. economy is doing all right.

“Let’s face it, rarely has the outlook for tax, spending, trade and foreign policies been so unclear,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at The Economic Outlook Group.

If that’s the case, the economy may be in for a bump ride until the dust settles after election day in November. Read: Trump or Clinton? Uncertainty could shock economy, forecaster says