Closing summary
Our main story:
The US jobs market added 130,000 jobs in January, according to a highly anticipated labor market report released on Wednesday, a surge of job growth after months of fatigue in the labor market.
The unemployment rate was 4.3% in January, a slight cooling since the fall. Economists predicted 70,000 in job gains and an unchanged unemployment rate for January.
The gains are still 13,000 jobs less than the the 143,000 jobs added a year ago in January 2025, but more than double the 50,000 jobs that were added in December.
Despite January’s boost to the labor market, the report also included revisions to the total number of new jobs in 2025. After revisions, total new jobs for the year was 181,000, down from an initially reported 584,000 jobs, marking the weakest year of job growth since the Covid-19 pandemic. In comparison, 2m jobs were added to the economy in 2024.
Wall Street stocks jumped on the news, and the dollar rose almost 0.5% against a basket of major currencies, as the data makes interest rate cuts less likely.
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Fujifilm Biotechnologies opens expanded £400m site in Teesside
Fujifilm Biotechnologies has officially opened its expanded advanced biologics manufacturing site on Teesside, on the old ICI site, backed by £400m from Japan’s Fujifilm Corporation.
The company is one of the UK’s largest inward investors in medicines manufacturing.
It will support the NHS by manufacturing medicines and vaccines of the future, to treat conditions from Alzheimer’s disease to prostate cancer and rare diseases.
The 110,000 sq. ft facility expands Fujifilm Biotechnologies’ existing presence in the North East and is one of the largest commercial-scale cell culture biomanufacturing sites in Europe.
Alongside the opening of the manufacturing facility, Fujifilm Biotechnologies also unveiled the Bioprocess Innovation Centre UK, one of the UK’s largest process development laboratories. Overall, the expansion creates one of Britain’s biggest biopharmaceutical manufacturing sites at 1,600,000 sq. ft.
The opening comes at a time when several high-profile life sciences investments have been withdrawn or paused from the UK, from MSD (known as Merck in the US) and AstraZeneca.
The investment also signals strong confidence in the UK life sciences sector and the continued strength of UK–Japanese trading relations during a period of geopolitical uncertainty, with this site in particular set to build strong links with a sister Fujifilm facility in Toyama, Japan, the company said.
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