(New York) The New York Stock Exchange traded in disarray on Friday following the announcement of disappointing job creation in December in the United States.
At 9 a.m., the Dow Jones, which had opened more severely in the red, lost only 0.05%. The NASDAQ rebounded to + 0.58%. The S&P 500 advanced 0.18%.
Thursday, the Dow Jones index had dropped 0.47% to 36,236.34 points, the NASDAQ, with strong technological coloring, 0.13% to 15,080.87 points, after a plunge of 3.34% the day before. The S&P 500 had dropped 0.10% to 4696.06 points.
To the surprise of analysts who expected a boom in employment in the figures, the US economy created only 199,000 jobs in November, far from the 440,000 expected.
This slowdown in hiring statistics reflects a difficult recovery in the labor market in the United States, subject to the vagaries of the pandemic.
The unemployment rate, however, fell brilliantly to 3.9%, its lowest in almost two years, according to another survey of the ministry which is based on households while that on jobs is done with companies.
Some analysts attributed this dichotomy between the statistics in part to the increase in the number of self-employed workers not yet listed.
But these figures were also worrying, because they do not yet take into account the impact of the Omicron variant. The data was collected before the variant spread across the country and forced a return to telework, the cancellation of thousands of flights, the closure of schools in some counties.
However, for many investors, underlined Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com, the weakness of job creation should not make the Fed change its mind, as it prepares to raise interest rates in three months.
The wage hike in December, welcome for workers, also raised eyebrows in the market, which sees it as a new sign of inflation.
Hourly wages rose 0.6% last month, more than expected, bringing the year-over-year increase to 4.7%. However, this remains less than the rise in prices.
“The takeaway from the report is that the Fed is on the cusp of reaching its goal of full employment and that rising wages in this tight labor market risk fueling the inflationary pressures it faces. we will have to deal with a firmer monetary policy, ”explained Patrick O’Hare.
Not only is the Fed planning at least three rate hikes of a quarter of a percentage point in 2022 to stem inflation, but it also intends to reduce the mass of bonds to its assets, another small monetary tightening.
For Bart Melek, of TD Securities, the rise in wages “invites the markets to think that the Fed will always consider this employment report as justifying a more severe monetary policy”.
Rates on 10-year Treasuries climbed to 1.75% from 1.72% at the close the day before.
The big names of NASDAQ, heckled since Wednesday and the minutes of the Fed, regained the green like Tesla (+ 0.56%), Amazon (+ 0.78%), or Apple (+ 0.94%).
Bank stocks were once again welcoming the prospect of a rate hike, a more profitable environment for banks. Bank of America took 1.93%, Wells Fargo 2.54% and Citigroup 2%.
The action of the chain of video game stores Gamestop, darling of online punters, soared more than 12% to 147 dollars. Press reports indicate that GameStop will launch a division to develop a market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), these new types of digital assets, and establish cryptocurrency partnerships.