US Q3 Employment Cost Index rises 0.8% QoQ, in line with expectations

The signal here is the direction of travel rather than the print: labor cost growth cooling from the prior quarter keeps the disinflation narrative intact without resolving it. For crypto and RWA markets, which trade largely on rate expectations, an in-line reading offers little new information, so the marginal move likely comes from elsewhere. The open question is whether this modest easing persists into subsequent quarters, since a sustained slowdown in wage pressures would matter more for the policy path than any single match-to-consensus figure.