Here's everything you need to know about Friday's big jobs report

The U.S. labor market may have cooled some in July, as a gradual slowdown in the economy and Hurricane Beryl are expected to have taken some of the steam out of hiring.

Still, even if the Labor Department's nonfarm payrolls report for July, to be released Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, does indicate a weaker jobs picture, the decline is expected to be only incremental and in keeping with the type of gentle downshift the Federal Reserve is looking to engineer.

"If the Fed was going to manufacture the soft landing, this is probably what it was going to look like," said Mike Reynolds, vice president of investment strategy at Glenmede. "You're seeing just modest on-the-margin weakness in the labor market that [isn't likely to] spiral out of control into a negative feedback loop."

Indeed, the report from the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics is forecast to show payroll gains of 185,000 on the month, down from 206,000 in June, with the unemployment rate holding at 4.1%, according to the Dow Jones consensus estimate. Job reports for the past year and a half have routinely beaten the consensus.

But some economists think the report could be on the light side; Goldman Sachs expects Beryl, which ravaged large parts of Texas, particularly Houston, to pull down the jobs number by 15,000. The firm thinks the total payroll gain will be more like 165,000. Citigroup projects an even lower number — 150,000 on payrolls and a tick higher in the unemployment rate to 4.2%.

Should the unemployment rate keep climbing, it could raise fears that the so-called Sahm Rule is in danger of being triggered. The rule has observed without fail that when the unemployment rate over a three-month period averages half a percentage point higher than the 12-month