The Skilling NFP Preview - December 2022

Skilling Writers Team
2022-11-30
- NFPs
- Trading

United States Non-Farm Payrolls

Is the US labour market finally starting to slow?

Commentary: Despite the fact that the US unemployment rate is only at 3.7% and remains near all-time lows, US nonfarm payrolls growth appears to be trending lower over the previous 9 months.

Bets are on for a softer US nonfarm payrolls number for November:

Expectations are that between 200,000 and 210,000 new jobs were created during the month of November
If true, this would be lower job growth than the 261,000 new jobs reported for October

Could investors be betting on the weakest US NFP since December 2020?

US nonfarm payrolls are a key market influencer

Will bad news be good news for stock market investors?

A strong jobs market leads to higher inflation as people earn more and spend more. Now that the US Fed has been on an aggressive interest rate hiking cycle, the effects of higher rates may finally be beginning to show up in the jobs market.

Any signal that the US labour market is “cooling” could be viewed by stock market investors as bullish as a weaker jobs outlook could lead to the Fed slowing its pace of interest rate hikes.

Product	*Last	1 month Percentage Change
Dow 30	33,911	3.19%
S&P 500	3,982.25	1.91%
Nasdaq 100	11,672.75	0.84%
VIX	23.3	-13.22%

prices recorded as of 29/11/2022 9:30 GMT

What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (The Dow), is a price-weighted measure of 30 U.S. blue-chip companies. The index covers all industries except transportation and utilities.

Over the last 30 days, Boeing has been the best performing stock within the Dow Jones 30 Index.
At the same time, Walt Disney has been the poorest performer.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained +35.28% since January 2019

The US Non-Farm Payrolls

The U.S. nonfarm payrolls are forecasted to show that between 200,000 - 210,000 new jobs were created during November. If this is the case, November would have created fewer jobs than the 261,000 new jobs that were created during October. Since inflation is an ongoing concern, any signals that the US jobs market is “cooling” may be deemed as “good” news for certain parts of the financial markets.