The US Labor Department’s report on how many more jobs US employers created than destroyed during May is expected to slow down hiring from April onward, especially since the US economy has been relying on its resilient job market.
The worry now is that all the uncertainty created by US President Donald Trump’s on-and-off tariffs could push businesses to freeze their hiring. A report on Thursday said more US workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected. The number remains relatively low compared with history, but it still hit its highest level in eight months.
World shares were mixed on Friday ahead of an update on the US job market that will offer insights into how the economy is faring.
The future for the S& P 500 gained 0.4 per cent while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.5 per cent.
Germany’s DAX lost 0.3 per cent to 24,263.21, while the CAC 40 in Paris edged 0.1 per cent lower, to 7,786.23. Britain’s FTSE 100 edged 0.2 per cent higher to 8,831.87.
In Asian trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.5 per cent to 37,741.61, while the Kospi in South Korea jumped 1.5 per cent to 2,812.05. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.2 per cent to 23,859.52 and the Shanghai Composite index edged less than 0.1 per cent higher, to 3,385.36. Australia’s S and P/ASX 200 shed 0.3 per cent to 8,515.70.
India’s Sensex gained 0.9 per cent after the Reserve Bank cut its key interest rate by a half a percentage point to 5.50 per cent.
On Thursday, the S and P 500 fell 0.5 per cent for its first drop in four days. After sprinting through May and rallying within a couple good days’ worth of gains of its all-time high, the index at the centre of many 401(k) accounts has lost momentum.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.3 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite sank 0.8 per cent.
The data came as Procter and Gamble, the giant behind such brands as Pampers diapers and Cascade dish detergent, said it will cut up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years. Its stock fell 1.9 per cent.
The day’s heaviest weight on the market was Tesla, which tumbled 14.3 per cent. It’s lost nearly 30 per cent of its value so far this year as CEO Elon Musk’s relationship with Trump sours amid a disagreement over the president’s signature bill of tax cuts and spending. In after-hours trading Tesla gained 0.8 per cent.
Brown-Forman, the company behind Jack Daniel's and Woodford Reserve, dropped 17.9 per cent for its worst day since it began trading in 1972.
Hopes that Trump will lower his tariffs after reaching trade deals with other countries have been among the main reasons the S and P 500 has rallied back so furiously since dropping roughly 20 per cent from its record two months ago. It's now back within 3.3 per cent of its all-time high.
Trump boosted such hopes Thursday after saying he had “a very good phone call” with China's leader, Xi Jinping, about trade and that “their respective teams will be meeting shortly at a location to be determined”. It's an easing of tensions after the world's two largest economies had earlier accused each other of violating the agreement that had paused their stiff tariffs against each other, which threatened to drag the economy into a recession.
Among Wall Street's winners was MongoDB, which jumped 12.8 per cent after the database company likewise delivered a stronger profit than analysts expected.
Circle Internet Group, the US-based issuer of one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, surged 168.5 per cent in its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury held steady at 4.40 per cent, up from 4.37 per cent late Wednesday after tumbling from 4.46 per cent the day before.
Yields dropped so sharply on Wednesday as expectations built that the Federal Reserve will need to cut interest rates later this year to prop up an economy potentially weakened by tariffs.
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