US stocks give up some gains following the jobs report but still poised for higher open

The market reaction to non-farm payrolls isn’t as bad as many feared. Some of that is the market taking-back the Israel-Iran fears yesterday but there’s also a changing undercurrent about the real source of US jobs growth in the past year.

Jason Furman, Obama’s former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers wrote this after the report.

The economy has generally been adding jobs at a 300K/month clip for several years now. At the same time the unemployment rate has been flat (or even a little up over the last year). Suggests this could be the steady-state pace of job growth, due to rapid immigration.

That’s an increasingly-consensus view and something I highlighted as a mitigating factor before the report.

S&P 500 futures have come down by about 10 points since the data but are still up 10 points, or 0.2%. Nasdaq futures are up 0.3%.

I will be watching to see if the Israel-Iran story pops up again today and if there are weekend jitters around that. Oil certainly hasn’t given up yesterday’s gains.