Interest rates take cues from several places. Regularly scheduled economic data is always a consideration because a stronger economy implies more growth and tighter Fed policy, both of which are bad for rates. Certain reports carry significantly more weight than others. If put to a vote, the perennial top dog would be The Employment Situation (aka "the jobs report"). Over the years it is responsible for more volume and volatility in rates than any other data. The most recent installment came out this morning and it was a doozy. The headline number of the jobs report is a tally of new job creation reported by employers: nonfarm payrolls (NFP). That's just a fancy name for "jobs." Today's data reported the new jobs added in January, and there were quite a bit more than expected. NFP can be fairly volatile. It's not uncommon to see the number deviate from forecasts by more than 100k a few times a year. Those big deviations usually result in big reactions in rates. Forecasts called for just shy of 200k jobs. Today's actual NFP number came in at a staggering 517k, thus edging out March 2022 to stand as the biggest deviation since August 2021. To some extent, the massive gains may be attributed to a seasonal adjustment process that still struggles to understand new seasonal patterns that emerged after the pandemic. But even if we forego seasonal adjustments, the economy added more than 400k jobs per month on average over the past 12 months and the employment rate has fallen to the lowest level since the 1960s.
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