On Wednesday, U.S. equity markets opened and closed unevenly. By the end of trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was calculated at 50,121 points, slipping 0.1 % from the prior trading day. The Nasdaq 100 finished higher, at 25,201 points, up 0.3 %. The broader S&P 500 was essentially unchanged, closing at 6,941 points.
The jobs report for January provided a modest lift. Excluding the agriculture sector, 130,000 new positions were added across the economy, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.3 % from 4.4 %. The report also highlighted revisions to earlier data: employment figures for newly founded companies had been considerably overstated, leading to a downward adjustment of nearly 900,000 jobs as of March 1, 2025.
Thomas Gitzel, chief economist at VP Bank, commented that “the U.S. labor market surprised in January by being unexpectedly dynamic”. He noted that the health‑care and construction sectors saw the most hiring, while the public sector and financial industry shed positions. Gitzel said the revisions made the data more credible, and added that former Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s recent remarks about downward risks in the labor market might now seem outdated. However, Powell’s cautious stance on further rate cuts remains justified, as the January data do not warrant rapid monetary easing.
