Non-farm payrolls in focus for Fed’s next move
In the US, the focus is on non-farm payrolls for the month of November, due at 1.30pm today.
For a few weeks now, the market has been trying to figure out how soon the US Federal Reserve will start cutting interest rates. IGTV’s Angela Barnes has the latest.
(AI Video Transcript)
The US Federal Reserve's decision
The big thing that traders are looking out for is the release of the non-farm payrolls report for November in the US. This report will give us a good idea of how many jobs were added or lost and could affect the US Federal Reserve's decision on interest rates. Right now, there's a tool called CME FedWatch that predicts a 90% chance of a rate cut by May 2024 and a 60% chance of a cut at the March meeting. So, if the report shows that not a lot of jobs were added, the chances of a rate cut happening sooner rather than later might go up.
The JOLTs report
There are a couple of other reports that are giving us some clues. One is the JOLTs report, which showed that job openings decreased a lot and reached the lowest level since March 2021. Another is the ADP survey, which found that private businesses hired 103,000 workers in November, which was less than expected. These reports are making traders pay more attention to the non-farm payrolls data.
People are really interested in the non-farm payrolls report, and you can see that because the price of the US dollar has gone up a little bit. The experts have different ideas about what the report will say. Some think around 100,000 to 275,000 jobs were added, but the average guess is around 180,000. This would be better than October, when 150,000 jobs were added. But keep in mind that around 30,000 workers had come back to work after being on strike.
They think the unemployment rate will stay the same at 3.9%, which is the highest it's been since January 2022. And they predict that hourly earnings will have gone up about 0.3% from October and 4% compared to last year. Overall, this report is an important one for traders because it could affect interest rates. It's interesting to see the different forecasts and what they mean for the job market and the economy.
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