CHICAGO (Reuters) — The US Federal Reserve’s reluctance to lay aside inflation worries likely deepened yesterday with a report showing robust jobs and wage growth in December — data that dashed financial market hopes for quick interest-rate cuts.The Labour Department report showed US employers added 167,000 new workers to their payrolls last month — well ahead of market forecasts for a 100,000 job gain — while worker hourly pay shot up an unexpectedly steep 0.5 percent.

“Today’s data will disappoint those looking for fresh signs of a downturn, and set back expectations for an about-face on monetary policy,” Citigroup economist Steven Wieting said in a research note.

Traders in financial markets took the jobs report to suggest policy-makers were unlikely to take any action to shore up a soft economy until the second half of the year.

The central bank has been on hold since June, when the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee fired off the last of 17 consecutive rate hikes and took the benchmark federal funds rate to 5.25 percent.

Minutes from the last FOMC meeting on December 12, released on Wednesday, had offered a hint that some policy-makers were ready to focus more on downside risks to economic growth.

But analysts said the jobs report should ease those budding concerns and steer officials back into a laser-like focus on the risk of wage-induced inflation.

“Suddenly we’re looking more at a sort of 3 percent-plus GDP world, which even the Fed has said is probably a growth rate that’s probably too fast,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis.

The new worries about wage pressures came, ironically, on a day when commodity prices fell to their lowest level in almost two years, as measured by the Reuters/Jefferies Commodity Research Bureau index.

But Fed officials never fully embraced the idea that price spikes for certain commodities, even gasoline, were the key factor pushing inflation higher, and that pressure would recede when that trend reversed.

Boston Federal Reserve Bank President Cathy Minehan, an FOMC voter this year, said Friday that absent further declines, lower energy costs would not bring about an additional decrease in inflation.

“If data comes in as we have seen recently, we should continue to see the likes of Minehan on the FOMC continue to be content leaving fed funds at 5.25 percent,” said Rudy Narvas, analyst at 4CAST Ltd. in New York.

At the margin, the December jobs report spurred market talk that the Fed could raise borrowing costs again to tamp down inflation — a far cry from assessments a few weeks ago that up to three-quarter points of easing was likely this year.