The futures market traded slightly higher despite the jobs report released looking disappointing in November. The US dollar index, which measures the greenback against major currencies, traded lower at 96.165 after NFP data was released.
The employment report released just now presented a mixed reaction among investors. The economy was only able to add to the total number of jobs far less than experts estimated in November. More unfortunately, these disappointing data precede the threat of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.
The November NFP reading only recorded an increase of 210,000, a figure well below analysts ’target of 573,000 jobs to be added. Despite this the unemployment rate fell sharply to 4.2% with the labor force participation rate rising for the month to 61.8%, which is the highest level since March 2020.
The leisure and hospitality sector, which includes bars, restaurants, hotels and similar businesses, saw gains of 23,000 job additions. The labor market looks gloomy and puts pressure on the Fed as the Fed prepares to tap. Policymakers have watched employment figures closely to gauge the extent to which the economy is recovering.
In a congressional testimony earlier this week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said he expects the central bank’s policy committee to discuss at its meeting that month about tapering amounts.
The Department of Labor on the other hand reported on Thursday that unemployment claims for the previous week totaled 220,000. That is lower than the target of 240,000 experts. Meanwhile, claims continued to decline to 1.956 million. This reading is seen as a positive sentiment.
