The employment report for June, to be released Friday, won't resolve considerable differences among market segments and economists concerning what lies ahead for the U.S. economy.

The possibilities include a continued new normal of low and insufficiently inclusive growth, an improvement that pulls up both actual and potential growth rates, or the worrisome beckoning of recession in the midst of even more extreme inequality. But the report can provide comfort to the Federal Reserve, which is still inclined to hike rates and reduce the size of its balance sheet, despite the economy’s recent soft patch.

Employment creation has been the bright spot of the U.S. economy in recent years. About 17 million jobs have been added since the depth of the recession in 2009, helping to push the unemployment rate down to 4.3 percent, its lowest level in 16 years.

Yet in sharp contrast to historical experience, these encouraging developments have failed to induce two other reactions produced by a truly health labor market: robust wage growth and the return of discouraged and marginalized workers. As a result, the historic run in job creation has done little to counter the gradual hollowing-out of the middle class, the spread of anger politics, worsening inequality, and the loss of trust in the establishment and the elites.

The situation would have been worse had the Fed not responded a few years ago to the political polarization in Congress that paralyzed most policy-making entities. Sensing that, hopefully just for now, it was the “only game in town” policy-wise, the Fed boldly took on a significantly expanded policy role. It relied  on a series of unconventional measures that -- due to the prolonged use of policy tools that are inevitably ill-suited for the structural task at hand -- delivers not just benefit, but also a risk of collateral damage and unintended consequences that threaten financial, institutional, political and perhaps even economic damage down the road.

Having bought time for the economy, the Fed is now inclined to normalize its policy stance before it goes from being a big part of the solution to becoming a big part of the problem. To this end, it has already hiked interest rates twice this year, signaled that it expects to hike rates again, and set out a plan for gradually reducing its record holdings of mortgage and government bonds.

Here is where Friday’s jobs report comes in.

To be comfortable in pursuing this path, the Fed needs to see further evidence of low and declining slack in the labor market. And this can come from three favorable developments, and one unfavorable one:

• Wage growth heading to, and above, an annualized 3 percent pace.
• Monthly job gains continuing in excess of 80,000 to 100,000, or what many would deem the “steady state” rate given population growth.
• A fall in the more comprehensive U-6 measure of unemployment.
• And, on the less favorable side, a relatively constant labor participation rate that confirms that what is holding back the return of those who exited the workforce is more structural than cyclical in nature.

If this is what the jobs report contains on Friday, markets will need to price more seriously the likelihood that the Fed will deliver on its policy guidance, starting with initiating the process of shrinking its balance sheet, together with another hike in the remainder of the year. In the process, the central bank would reduce two risks: that future growth would be derailed by today’s current financial market excesses, and that both its mandate and operational autonomy would be vulnerable to greater political interference.

What even this wouldn’t do, however, is provide decisive relief for concerns about economic growth that is too low and insufficiently inclusive. For that, Congress and the administration need to accelerate work on pro-growth policies, starting with tax reform, infrastructure and labor market measures that better address the structural impediments.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mohamed A. El-Erian is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is the chief economic adviser at Allianz SE, the parent company of Pimco, where he served as CEO and co-CIO. He was chairman of the president's Global Development Council, CEO and president of Harvard Management Company, managing director at Salomon Smith Barney and deputy director of the IMF. His books include "The Only Game in Town" and "When Markets Collide."