The White House is bracing for Friday’s jobs report, bearing closely watched clues about what's next for the U.S. economy. Why it matters: Late last year, release of the Consumer Price Index supplanted the employment report as the most anticipated data dump of the month. Now, with the Fed trying to navigate between growth and inflation, the details of the jobs numbers once again are front-burner. • Conventional wisdom — the better the numbers, the better the politics — may not apply when Americans are hammered by high inflation and the effects of the Federal Reserve's efforts to fight it, by higher interest rates and ... (full story)