Employment grew by a hefty 227,000 jobs in January, but the workers’ wage gains were tepid at best, and bond traders see little reason for the Federal Reserve to pick up the pace of interest rate hikes.
“The good news was payrolls were muscular, but the bad news was average hourly earnings only grew 0.1 percent,” said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies. Wage growth was expected to come in at 0.3 percent. Economists had only expected 175,000 payrolls, and instead got the best job growth since September.
Stock futures rose, the dollar briefly fell, and Treasury yields declined, led by the 2-year. The 2-year Treasury is most sensitive to Fed rate hikes, and its yield fell to 1.16 percent. Ahead of the report, it had been as high as 1.24 percent.
via CNBC
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