Tomorrow, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its monthly jobs report, we’ll be looking at what the Federal Reserve should pay attention to as they debate whether or not to raise interest rates at the next FOMC meeting in September. The Fed has continued to read the signs right and has kept its foot off the brakes as the economy continues to recover from the Great Recession. However, there are some rumblings of an interest rate hike in September. Such a hike would be premature. Where’s the evidence that the Fed should raise rates this year? If anything, the recovery has been slowing: on average, only 208,000 jobs were added in the first six months of this year, compared to an average 281,000 in the last six months of 2014. Yes, there was a long, cold winter, but we’ve yet to see the thaw in the topline numbers. A serious look at the economy suggests slow growth, not acceleration.

Nominal wage growth is one of the top indicators for the Fed to watch as it considers whether or not to raise rates, and I don’t see much positive news there. Wage growth has been pretty flat for the last five years, as shown in the chart below. And, the data from the Employment Cost Index that came out earlier this week confirms those trends.

It comes as no surprise that wage growth has remained sluggish. First, there is still slack in the labor market: there are over 3 million “missing” workers, who have been sidelined because of weak job opportunities. And then there is the fact that the employment-to-population ratio among prime-age workers remains depressed. For several years, the trend was looking up, but in the last four months, the EPOP hasn’t budged. Another sign of a potentially stalling recovery.

All of these indicators will be important to watch on jobs day. So far, they provide evidence of a slow but steady recovery. Because of the upcoming Fed meeting, observers and analysts should pay particular attention to growth in nominal wages, looking for signs of any acceleration. That said, acceleration from today’s sluggish rates of growth should not be taken as a worrisome signal of uncontrolled inflation; instead, they should be taken as an encouraging sign that the economy is recovering. Given this, policymakers should hold off attempts to slow the recovery in the name of fighting inflation until a reasonable wage target is attained (see a fuller discussion of just such wage target here). It’s clear that no matter what the numbers are on Friday, a rate hike in September is just too soon for the economy and for the American workforce. We need to continue to give the economy the opportunity to build momentum before slowing it down.