Just as a consensus seemed to be emerging that the US Federal Reserve would raise interest rates at its upcoming September 16-17 meeting, a week of broad swings in global equity markets has once again cast doubt on the timeline for rate normalization.

The story is well-known at this point. Chinese equity markets have come crashing down to earth after a year of froth and, more importantly for global markets, there has been a slew of weak data pointing to a slowdown in the world’s second largest economy. This combined with a predictable plummet in energy prices resulted in a volatile few weeks for US equities. Currently the Dow is off around 7% from where it stood on August 18, and this taking into account the modest recovery that played out in Wednesday trading.

This may end up putting the skids on a September rate hike by Yellen and company. Despite a procession of strong data from the US economy – the latest being the Fed’s own Beige Book that saw much-anticipated wage growth across several industries – choppy equity markets and fears over the extent of China’s slowdown will create pressure to put off the hike yet again, pushing it back to the Fed’s meeting in December.

The final decider might well be Friday’s jobs report from the Labor Department – the last such report before the upcoming mid-September meeting. Economists are estimating that around 218,000 jobs will have been added in August, a slight increase from the 211,000 monthly average over 2015. If the final result comes in below estimates, or even at the same level, we will probably see the rate hike pushed back to December. If the report beats expectations, there will be a greater chance that September will see the first rate hike. In this the behavior of equity markets between now and September 16 will be telling. If calm prevails, there will be a greater chance of an earlier normalization.