Latest news with #EmploymentReport
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Fed likely unmoved despite uneven May jobs report
-- Despite President Trump's strong push for rate cuts, today's jobs report suggests the labor market remains resilient, leading economists to believe the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell are likely to stay on pause for now. Today's nonfarm payroll report showed the U.S. economy added 139,000 jobs in May, which was above the consensus of 126,000 job additions. A drop in labor force participation to 62.4 percent helped keep unemployment steady at 4.2 percent. Payroll gains were led by health care and leisure and hospitality, with minimal change elsewhere. Wages rose 0.4 percent, while the household survey showed a 696,000 job decline. Notably, the jobs numbers for April and March were revised lower by 95,000 jobs combined. Today's jobs report follows labor market data earlier this week showing job openings rose to 7.4 million in April from 7.2 million in March, while jobless claims increased to 247,000 for the week ending May 31, near the upper end of their 12-month range. UBS Wealth Management Senior U.S. economist Brian Rose said that while today's employment report was mixed, the jobs market is not weak enough to warrant rate cuts at this time. He sees the fed on hold until September. 'In our view, the labor market is not showing the type of weakness that the Fed would need to see in order to consider cutting rates at the June FOMC meeting,' Rose states. 'We expect to see further softening in the second half of 2025 as tariffs and other policy measures weigh more heavily on the economy, leading the Fed to start cutting rates in September.' Gilles Moëc, Group Chief Economist at AXA Investment Managers, echoed that sentiment, saying there are "still too many jobs to sway the Fed." '… in a nutshell, this Employment Report, despite some problematic details, does not provide the 'smoking gun' which could sway the Fed out of its current 'wait and see" attitude, especially since wages continue to grow at a relatively healthy pace,' Moëc commented. 'Given the risks of an impending inflationary shock, it would take a tangible worsening of the hard data for the Fed to re-think its stance.' David Doyle, head of economics at Macquarie, said the May employment data contained 'mixed signals'. He highlighted that the 10-year yield rose, and market expectations for Fed rate cuts in 2025 fell to 45 basis points from 54 basis points after the data, reflecting reduced fears following weaker economic reports earlier in the week. "Looking ahead, we expect the labor market to struggle, but not deteriorate sharply," Doyle commented. "One source of resiliency that may prevent a steep rise in unemployment is low labor force growth stemming from a curtailment of immigration and elevated retirements." Related articles Fed likely unmoved despite uneven May jobs report Fed's Harker says rate cuts this year still possible Canadian labor market beats expectations in May with surprise job gain
Miami Herald
4 days ago
- Business
- Miami Herald
Stock Market Today: Something Different: Here's Market Recon from TheStreet Pro's ‘Sarge' Guilfoyle
Happy Thursday. We're doing something a little different today. We're kicking off the Stock Market Today column with comments from Stephen "Sarge" Guilfoyle's daily Market Recon. This is the type of great analysis he provides every day over in TheStreet Pro. If the Pros don't trade blind-why should you? Cut through the noise with premium insights from TheStreet Pro It could have gotten ugly, one might have thought. The information started trickling out on Wednesday morning. It certainly wasn't pretty. There was no bouquet of flowers tossed down from on high to brighten the mood. There would be no aroma of freshly baked bread wafting across the street to disguise the wretched stench of decay. There would be no knight in shining armor that could arise from the shadows to defend the citizenry from their fears. Still, as the numbers hit publication... as viewpoints expressing pessimism spread ... equity markets hung in there, supported by demand for debt securities that suppressed yields. That suppressed interest rates. So, it was. So now, it has been written. Suddenly, after a spate of negative reports had taken stocks down from their early morning and mid-morning highs, bond traders started buying U.S. Treasuries. On Wednesday, the U.S. 10-Year note, our nation's benchmark debt security, went out paying just 4.36%, down 11 basis points for the day. The 2-Year Note yielded just 3.88% (-8 bps) by day's end. The prospect for lower interest rates going forward allowed stocks to breathe and hold their levels on a day that they might otherwise have suffered a bout of profit taking. Just a day after investors had seen the S&P 500 technically confirm last Thursday's bullish change of trend. Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Report for May could still turn markets on their ear, Or not. The "big, beautiful bill" could pass. Or not. Talks between Pres. Trump and China's Pres. Xi could go well. Or not. Heads on a swivel, gang. Two sources of water. Clean socks. Full battle rattle. What impacted the markets on Wednesday? What's about to impact our marketplace? Let's go... Uh oh. On Wednesday morning, the ADP Report on private sector hiring for May showed just 37,000 jobs created during the month. This was the fewest jobs shown as having been created by this report for any single month in more than two years. This shows a deceleration from April's creation of 60,000 private sector jobs and badly missed the consensus view for 110,000 jobs created. This does not necessarily mean that Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics print will be weak, but it could. Anything this ugly on Friday will not pass unnoticed by investors. The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index hit the tape at 49.9 (50 is the line in these surveys between expansion and contraction), just a few days after the ISM Manufacturing Index had crossed the tape at 48.5. The real worry for May is the component labeled "New Orders," which is the single most important item in any business survey. For the month New Orders printed at 46.4 for Services and 47.6 for Manufacturing. That's nasty. Inventories and Backlogged Orders both also showed decay. Didn't anything show expansion? Oh, you bet your tail something did. Inflation did. Prices printed at a red hot 68.7 for the services economy and a white hot 69.4 for the manufacturing economy. Does that mean that we'll see reacceleration of consumer level inflation for May? I would think this is likely. We'll almost certainly see that producer level inflation has come back to life. The Federal Reserve released their Beige Book on Wednesday afternoon. The Beige Book, for the new kids, is a central bank publication containing anecdotal economic information from across the Fed's 12 regional districts, released eight times a year ahead of policy decisions. The Fed will make its next decision on monetary policy on June 18. On overall economic activity: "Reports across the 12 Federal Reserve Districts indicate that economic activity has declined slightly since the previous report. Half of the Districts reported slight to moderate declines in activity, three Districts reported no change, and three Districts reported slight growth." Boston... "Economic activity decreased slightly overall." New York... "Economic activity in the Second District continued to decline modestly amid heightened uncertainty." Philadelphia... "Business activity declined modestly in the current Beige Book period, as it did in the last period." Minneapolis... "The District contracted slightly overall." Kansas City... "Overall activity declined moderately, driven by lower retail spending, a decline in the demand for single-family homes, and a slight contraction in manufacturing." San Francisco... "Economic activity slowed slightly." Elsewhere, Richmond, Atlanta and Chicago reported slight expansion, while Dallas, Cleveland and St. Louis reported no change in business activity. Fed Funds Futures markets trading in Chicago are now pricing in a 76% probability for a quarter-point rate cut on Sept. 17 and a 54% likelihood for another quarter-point rate cut on Oct. 29. That would be it for the year. Two more rate quarter-percentage point cuts are currently being priced in for 2026. The Congressional Budget Office, which is non-partisan, but not always correct, assessed the president's "big, beautiful bill" and reported on Wednesday its expectation that over 10 years the bill, if passed into law, would increase deficits by $2.4 trillion. There is a real concern over passage in the Senate now, with a number of fiscal conservatives fretting that the budget cuts in the bill don't go far enough and other senators showing dismay that these cuts go too far. I tend to agree with the fiscal hawks here, as that is my nature as an economist. That, my friends, is neither here nor there. What matters is that the U.S. Dollar Index traded lower on this news and that while Treasury securities showed strength due to weakness in the above economic news, that the long end of the spectrum of Treasury securities could become unanchored should the federal government continue to behave in a fiscally reckless manner. The weaker dollar would indeed be inflationary. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 closed essentially flat (+0.01%), while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.32% thanks to a 1.39% run made by the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. Marvell Technologies (MRVL) and ON Semiconductor (ON) led that group for the day. Otherwise, not a lot changed on Wednesday. The Dow Transports gave up 0.46%, while the small to midcap indices all gave back between 0.2% and 0.26%. Six of the 11 S&P sector SPDR ETFs closed out Wednesday's regular session in the green, led by the Communication Services (XLC) fund that only gained 0.64%. While only five of these funds closed in the red, Energy (XLE) gave up 1.95% as exploration, refining and pipeline stocks all took a pounding, and the Utilities (XLU) gave back 1.75%. Winners beat losers on the NYSE on Wednesday by just three issues. This was largely a 50/50 split. Winners did lead losers at the Nasdaq by a 6-to-5 margin. Advancing volume did take a nifty 65.5% share of composite Nasdaq-listed trade on Wednesday, but just a 45.8% share of composite NYSE-listed activity. Most importantly, on a day-over-day basis, aggregate trade contracted across NYSE-listings by 5.2% and across Nasdaq-listed securities by 3.7%. Aggregate trade across the membership of the S&P 500 also fell 9% short of the trading volume 50-day simple moving average for the index on Wednesday after falling just 4% short of that line in the sand on Tuesday. Does this render Wednesday's market as less significant that it might otherwise be? In short, technically, the answer is "yes." Price discovery is always more meaningful and more impactful when increased trading volume implies increased professional participation. Readers will see just how incredibly accurate technical analysis has been through this recent period. On Wednesday, the index, though quiet, did build on Tuesday's confirmation of Thursday's change in trend. Is Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) getting ready to make a serious run at industry leader Nvidia (NVDA) ? Is Lisa Su getting ready to make a serious run at Jensen Huang? Maybe. Check out these past few moves that largely flew under the radar: June 4th: AMD announces the acquisition of open-source software company Brium in an effort to further its prowess in generative artificial intelligence. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. May 28th: AMD announced the acquisition of silicon photonics company Enosemi to boost co-packaging and the firm's prowess in generative AI. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. May 20th: AMD announced the divestiture of its ZT Systems, which is a data center manufacturing company for $3 billion. But the firm retained ZT's 1,200-person engineering team at a cost of about $1.6 billion or $1.33 million per engineer. This should improve AMD's competitiveness in the data center GPU market. My Conclusion? AMD is back among my top 10 holdings when ranked by weighting (number 10) after a long hiatus. We skipped much of the 2024 decline. Our net basis is currently $99.91. I expect to continue to buy the stock on weakness when that opportunity arises going forward. Nvidia remains my 15th heaviest allocation. I have no plans to add. 08:30 - Initial Jobless Claims (Weekly):Expecting 230K, Last 229K. 08:30 - Continuing Claims (Weekly): Last 1.919M. 08:30 - Balance of Trade (Apr): Last $-140.5B. 08:30 - Non-Farm Productivity (Q1-F): Flashed -0.8% q/q. 08:30 - Unit Labor Costs (Q1-F): Flashed 5.7% q/q. 10:30 - Natural Gas Inventories (Weekly): Last +101B cf. 12:00 p.m. - Speaker: Reserve Board Gov. Adriana Kugler. 1:30 - Speaker: Philadelphia Fed Pres. Patrick Harker. Before the Open: (CIEN) (.52) After the Close: (AVGO) (1.57), (DOCU) (.81), (LULU) (2.60) At the time of publication, Guilfoyle was long AMD, NVDA equity. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'Pay premium' for switching jobs hits post-pandemic low
The gap between pay raises for job changers versus job stayers just hit its lowest level since the labor market began recovering from the pandemic in 2020. New data from ADP released on Wednesday showed wage growth for job changers fell to 6.5% in March, down from 6.8% the month prior. Meanwhile pay growth for job stayers slipped to 4.5%, in line with its lowest level in more than three years. The difference between the two pay growth numbers, which ADP refers to as the "pay premium" workers see to change their jobs, sat at just 1.9%. This was in line with the lowest premium for job changer pay growth since ADP began tracking the data in November 2020. ADP chief economist Nela Richardson told Yahoo Finance this data is another sign that the labor market has cooled over the past few years and lost is "dynamism." "The US labor market is marked and characterized by dynamism," Richardson said. "You want some kind of flow in and out. You want companies to attract workers [with] better opportunities. And what we're seeing is basically firms are not laying off workers, and workers aren't quitting, and we're in this really stable equilibrium, but not a very dynamic one." Richardson added that the decline in the pay premium for job movers could point to a further decline in the quits rate among workers. The quits rate, which is seen as a reading of confidence among workers about the health of labor market, is already hovering near a decade low, hitting 2% in February. ADP's Employment Report showed the private sector added 155,000 jobs in March, above economists expectations for 120,000 — and significantly higher than the 85,000 added in February. February's number of job additions was revised up from a prior reading of 77,000. Richardson described the headline increase as a "very good number" considering that uncertainty around President Trump's policies has recently driven several sentiment indicators from consumers and businesses lower. But under the surface, there weren't broadbased job gains. Three sub sectors — professional and business services, financial activities and manufacturing — drove nearly 75% of the job gains in the month. Another look at the state of the labor market is expected on Friday with the release of the March employment report. Consensus expects the report to show the US labor market added 140,000 jobs in the month, down from the 151,000 seen in February. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is expected to have held steady at 4.1%. Josh Schafer is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X @_joshschafer. Sign in to access your portfolio
