(Reuters] – U.S. stocks index futures edged down on Friday. Sentiment remained fragile following a sharp selloff in Wall Street the previous session. Investors are awaiting April job data, which could shed light on how interest rate increases might be coming.

At 08:30 AM, the Labor Department will release its report. ET will likely show that the nonfarm payrolls rose by 391 000 jobs in April, after rising 431,000.

According to the report, unemployment fell to 3.5% in April from its peak of 3.5% before the pandemic, which is likely to be reflected in the report. Wages rose steadily as a result, which highlights the difficulty the Federal Reserve must face to stop high inflation.

Investors feared that larger rate increases might be necessary to curb inflation, which is at an all-time high of four decades. The indexes plummeted on Thursday. The chance for a Fed 75-basis point increase at its June meeting is 78%, even though Fed chief Jerome Powell has ruled out such an increase in the future meeting.[IRPR]

As rate-sensitive stocks of growth were crushed, the Nasdaq plunged 5%. This was its largest one-day percentage drop since June 2020.

Marios Hadjikyriacos is a senior analyst for forex broker XM. He stated that “for the market to find a true bottom it must have some signs of inflation starting to cool down first.”

“This places additional emphasis upon the US employment report and in particular the component on wage growth that can be considered an early indicator for ‘organic’ inflationary pressures.”

Comparable to the 4.9% drop in its value counterpart (which houses sensitive sectors such as energy and banks), the growth index has fallen nearly 20% year-to-date.

The Megacap stock market was mixed Friday with Microsoft Corp Premarket trading was down 0.6%

Wells Fargo With a fall of 1.1%, NYSE: led the declines in big banks.

At 06:58 AM. ET fell 81 points (or 0.25%) and was down 16.5 point (0.4%), respectively. They were also down 0.4% by ET. ET dropped 77 points (0.6%).

The Fed met on May 4. Investors continued pulling capital out from equity funds, according to a BofA Report citing EPFR Data. U.S. Equities suffered another week of losses with $2.1billion lost.

DoorDash Inc. rose 6.6% among stocks after the delivery company reported positive quarterly results.