The employment report continues to be significantly relevant as the Omicron variant disrupts the global economy, giving a jolt to kick off the new year. The unexpected drop in the private sector employment announced on Wednesday affected all industries and business of all sizes. After increasing by 776K in December, the US ADP employment change of January decreased by 301K, the first drop since December 2020 and the biggest since April 2020.
After Wednesday, economists also kept a close eye on the US nonfarm payrolls. The reviewed data (up from 199 thousand) for December showed 510K new jobs, better than the 400K expected. Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a job gain of 467K, higher than the 150K forecast, despite the White House warning that January’s employment data could be skewed due to the increase of covid cases and the illness absences of workers. The unemployment rate, on the other hand, is up 4.0%, in line with expectation.
As a result of the report, stock market futures fell, while government bond yields increased sharply.
