A stock market rally that followed a healthy gain in U.S. employment in August gave way to losses on Friday with the three major indexes closing at their lowest levels since late July, as Wall Street assessed one of the last major economic reports the Federal Reserve will see before it raises its benchmark interest rate at its upcoming September meeting.
“Today’s jobs report seems to be kind of right down the middle,” said Melissa Brown, head of global research at Qontigo, an investment management firm. “I guess in that sense, by not being bad news, it’s good news. But it just didn’t seem like it was a big surprise to anybody, given that I would expect that the Fed is going to stand the course that they’ve been staying on.”The unemployment rate, meanwhile, rose to 3.7% from 3.5%, largely due to a rising labor-force participation rate.
Investors have been eyeing the August jobs report for further clues as to how much and for how long the Fed will raise interest rates. However, according to Young, there’s no signs for the central bank to back off its policy-tightening as investors are simply “grasping at straws, trying to find something cooling in this report.”
The government reported Thursday that the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits at the end of August fell to a nine-week low of 232,000, showing no sign that a slowing U.S. economy is triggering widespread layoffs.
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