Wall Street zooms higher on news of labor market improvements
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Wall Street zooms higher on news of labor market improvements
Stocks are rushing higher in morning trading Friday after a much better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market gave Wall Street’s recent rally another shot of adrenaline.
The S&P 500 was up 2.2% after the government said that U.S. employers added 2.5 million workers to their payrolls last month. Economists were expecting them instead to slash another 8 million jobs amid the recession caused by the coronavirus and the shutdowns put in place to stem it.
While economists cautioned that it’s just one month of data and that many risks still loom on the long road to a full recovery, the report gives some credence to the optimism building among stock investors that the economy can climb out of its current hole relatively quickly. That hope has been a big reason for the better than 40% rally for the S&P 500 since late March.
The S&P 500 is now down only about 6% from its record set in February after being down nearly 34% earlier this year when recession worries were peaking.
“It looks like the healing process is underway in the jobs market and it looks like it’s happening sooner than expected,” said Todd Lowenstein, equity strategy executive of The Private Bank at Union Bank. “It looks like the worst is behind us.”
“It looks like the healing process is underway in the jobs market and it looks like it’s happening sooner than expected,” said Todd Lowenstein, equity strategy executive of The Private Bank at Union Bank. “It looks like the worst is behind us.”
“It looks like the healing process is underway in the jobs market and it looks like it’s happening sooner than expected,” said Todd Lowenstein, equity strategy executive of The Private Bank at Union Bank. “It looks like the worst is behind us.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 949.5 points, or 3.6%, at 27,231 as of 11:40 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq was up 1.99%.
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