NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - In case there was any doubt, Friday's jobs report made a Fed rate hike a done deal. The only questions now are: how far and how fast will rates rise?
The answer depends on whether or not policy-makers have been watching the right numbers.
Friday morning, the Labor Department reported a second consecutive blowout number for monthly job growth, sending economists scrambling to readjust their forecasts for the Federal Reserve's first interest-rate hike since May 2000. 
"Up until now, we viewed the probability of a Fed tightening starting in 2005 as more likely than a start in 2004," Credit Suisse First Boston economists wrote in a note to clients after the jobs report. "The data changed that risk profile. We now expect Fed tightening to commence no later than the [Fed's] August [policy] meeting."
Central bankers slashed the fed funds rate, an overnight bank lending rate used to change the economy's velocity, 13 times between 2001 and 2003, one of its most aggressive campaigns in history. Earlier this week, amid signs of higher consumer prices and a healing job market, the Fed said the risk of falling prices had disappeared and warned it might soon start to raise short-term rates to head off inflation.