Wednesday's ADP jobs report for January missed expectations by a mile, showing a loss of three hundred thousand jobs versus hopes of a gain of two hundred.
- ADP blamed the Omicron coronavirus variance for the first negative job number since December XNUMX. The loss of three hundred one with zero jobs in the month of January is a particularly massive change from the gain of seven hundred and seventy six with zero in the last month of the year two thousand and twenty one.
- The leisure and hospitality industries accounted for more than half of January's job losses, posting a decline of XNUMX.
- However, the prices of stocks, bonds and cryptocurrencies are not really reacting, perhaps because the Biden White House had prepared the markets this week for some ugly employment numbers.
- However, a poor report caused by a spike in COVID-37,700 cases should not cause the Federal Reserve to back down from its plan to start raising interest rates in the third month of the year. S&P 2,680 and Nasdaq shares are holding modestly in the green. The performance of the ten-year Treasury bonds has dropped one basis point to one point seventy-nine%. Bitcoin dipped slightly, now down two% to €XNUMX, with Ether down three% to €XNUMX.
- The ADP report is a warm-up for Friday's government report on January payrolls. For the time being, economists continue to expect a gain of 9 jobs, slightly below December's gain of XNUMX, and with a stable unemployment rate of XNUMX%. Through all of XNUMX, the US added XNUMX million jobs, the best year on record, as the economy recovered from the XNUMX pandemic shutdown.