S&P 500 futures were up 0.32% this morning after the index closed flat yesterday at 6,941. Investors seem to be buoyed by the strong job-market numbers published yesterday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. With unemployment falling from 4.4% to 4.3%, many Wall Street analysts are saying that this means the U.S. Federal Reserve is now less likely to cut interest rates further. If the economy is doing just fine, there’s no need to risk inflation by delivering still more cheaper money, the theory goes.
Some of them think the labor market is now so tight that the Fed may even raise rates (a scenario likely to provoke rage from President Donald Trump).
But, as always, the devil is in the details. A couple of analysts are worried that the latest number might be wrong, and that the level of job creation in the U.S. is lower than the stats suggest.
First, the number of jobs added in January—130,000—was roughly double analysts’ expectations. Analysts aren’t always right, of course. But it is interesting that the reported number was way out of line with economists’ estimates.
Second, the BLS revised downward the number of jobs it previously reported for 2024–25. The real number was just 181,000, the agency said, and not the 584,000 it had estimated earlier.
