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It's normal to be nervous when your plane is near the ground. The tranquility of the sky and clouds is swiftly replaced with concrete zooming past you and the sensation of your stomach dropping.

With less than a week to go before the Fed implicitly declares an improbable “soft landing,” the final descent and last-minute inflation data are still managing to keep the investors guessing — and looking across the aisle at each other.

The fear isn't irrational. Over half of aviation accidents over the last 20 years happened in the landing phase, according to Airbus, and every investor knows that the economic equivalent is just as fraught.

A double dose of inflation readings this week strengthened the case that pricing pressures are easing down to the Fed’s 2% target. But even as some metrics registered hotter than expected, the risks of a labor market slowdown are weighing more heavily on central bankers. The years-long battle to tame inflation has taken a back seat to concerns over keeping Americans employed.

“Now that we’ve seen four consecutive months of good news on inflation, (coming off three bad reports) the Fed now has to keep up the other side of their mandate — full employment,” Gina Bolvin, president of Bolvin Wealth Management Group, told Yahoo Finance. “The job market will continue to be an influencer.”

Last month’s jobs report seemed to calm the worst fears of labor market trouble while still stoking worries that a summer slowdown could serve as a preview of things to come. Employers added fewer jobs than expected in August. And revisions to the June and July labor reports showed the US economy added fewer jobs than initially thought.

“Improving inflation trends give the Fed the leeway to focus more on full employment, the other side of their dual mandate,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial.

“The fragile job market bolsters the expectation that the Fed will pivot away from an inflation preoccupation.”

On Wednesday the government reported the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in August rose at the slowest pace in three years on an annual basis. The mild rise of 2.5% was followed by another encouraging report on Thursday, which showed wholesale prices mostly cooling compared to a year ago. The Producer Price Index revealed prices climbed 1.7% in August, the smallest 12-month rise since February.