The Federal Reserve is expected to announce today its second rate cut of the year to rescue the US job market, though its real challenge, analysts say, will be figuring out how many of these will be needed to give a meaningful prod to labour growth.

Sputnik/RIA Novosti reported that the demands before the 12 voting members of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) are not easy: Jobs growth has slowed to almost a crawl, with unemployment ticking up to a near four-year high of 4.3 percent as of September.

Compounding the problem is...