Stocks rise mainly on the back of a sharp deterioration in employment data and a tech windfall

Stocks were mostly trading higher on Friday following the big January jobs report, the last major indicator in a week full of market-moving events.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell 0.2%, or 70 points, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC) rose 0.3%.

An important week for investors is coming to an end. As Yahoo Finance's Josh Schafer reports, Friday's highlight was the jobs report, with economic growth adding 353,000 jobs in January, beating Wall Street expectations. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.7%.

The labor market remains resilient despite the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike campaign, but other indicators this week showed signs of softening. The decline sparked by Jerome Powell just two days ago is now almost a footnote, especially after Powell suggested that a strong labor market is actually a good sign. Friday's jobs report could once again change expectations about the Fed's interest rate policy. .

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were still basking in the glow of strong earnings reports from tech giants Amazon (AMZN) and Meta (META) on Thursday. As Yahoo Finance's Hamza Shaban writes, they delivered a product that Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) failed to achieve earlier this week. Meta soared more than 16% in morning trading, while Amazon jumped 6%.

Apple (AAPL) also appeared to be disappointed by warning signs about its China business, despite Thursday's higher profit. Apple fell 3.5% on the move.

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Friday, February 2, 2024, 9:38 a.m. ET

Stock prices were mostly positive in morning trading.

Wall Street was hesitant in Friday morning trading, with major indexes little changed. Investors digested the blockbuster jobs report, which nearly doubled expected numbers, while analyzing the standout earnings of tech giants Meta (META) and Amazon (AMZN).

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell 0.4%, or 150 points, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC) rose 0.5%.
Friday, February 2, 2024, 8:59 a.m. ET

The labor market recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is complete. Also.

Fast forward to 2022, and total U.S. employment rose above pre-COVID-19 levels, marking one of the fastest trough-to-peak increases of any post-recession recovery.

On Friday, the news got even better.

Joseph Politano, author of the Apricitas Economics newsletter, said: listed in X All major sectors of the U.S. economy have fully recovered from the losses seen during the pandemic.

The addition of 11,000 jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector in January completed the final piece of this recovery puzzle.

Source: Apricitas Economics
Friday, February 2, 2024, 8:46 a.m. ET

US labor market continues to impress

The U.S. economy added 353,000 nonfarm jobs in January, nearly double the 185,000 that economists expected, adding 333,000 jobs to the economy in the final month of 2023. This exceeded the upwardly revised figure in December, which showed that the amount had been added.

Wages also exceeded expectations, with average hourly wages rising 0.6% from last month and 4.6% from the previous year.

The revised employment statistics for November and December increased the number of new positions created in those months by 126,000.

And the benchmark revisions that some thought could have skewed last year's job growth significantly downward were modest, with 187,000 fewer jobs added to the economy over the year than previously announced. It showed that there were fewer people.

Chairman Powell suggested Wednesday that a rate cut in March is not the Fed's base case, but Friday's data makes it seem more likely that that view will change over the next six weeks.
Friday, February 2, 2024 7:31am ET

Technology revenue and employment in the spotlight

It's a nice Friday morning!

A whirlwind week for markets and the economy is coming to an end, with the final main event, the January jobs report, coming to an end. Yahoo Finance's Josh Schafer will have all the numbers and reaction starting at 8:30 a.m. ET.

There will also be a focus on the aftermath of Big Tech's last significant earnings report this quarter. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was expected to jump more than 1% as Meta and Amazon soared. But Apple had warned about its China business and was preparing for decline.