Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / Tariff Tornado Trumps Jobs Report | S2 E029 | 04-04-25

Transcript

Tariff Tornado Trumps Jobs Report | S2 E029 | 04-04-25 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  Megan Horneman: It's the first time in a long time that the monthly employment rate really didn't matter much to markets.
• 0:05
  Megan Horneman: Today it's Friday, april the 4th, and this is Markets with Megan.
• 0:08
  Megan Horneman: If you like this podcast, please subscribe.
• 0:11
  Megan Horneman: Hit that alarm bell, share it with friends, family or colleagues.
• 0:13
  Megan Horneman: But we're coming to you today to give a little bit of a recap on the monthly employment report that we received this morning.
• 0:19
  Megan Horneman: When we look at the amount of jobs that were added to the US economy, it was better than expected 228,000 jobs in March, which was up from the expectation of just 140,000.
• 0:30
  Megan Horneman: But when you dig into that, you do see a net 48,000 jobs that were lost over the prior two months.
• 0:36
  Megan Horneman: So there were downward revisions.
• 0:37
  Megan Horneman: The unemployment rate did rise slightly from 4.1 to 4.2.
• 0:41
  Megan Horneman: And when you look at that, the labor force participation rate actually rose to 62.5.
• 0:47
  Megan Horneman: So we saw a pretty big increase in the household employment survey, meaning people coming back into the labor force.
• 0:53
  Megan Horneman: Now where were the jobs concentrated?
• 0:55
  Megan Horneman: We did see quite a bit in the trade and transportation, private education and health, and then we did see, surprisingly, an increase in the leisure and hospitality.
• 1:04
  Megan Horneman: I know there's some questions around when we'll start seeing the loss of the federal government jobs.
• 1:08
  Megan Horneman: Right now we're not seeing too much of it.
• 1:10
  Megan Horneman: We've only lost 15,000 over the past two months.
• 1:15
  Megan Horneman: Temporary help this is a kind of a precursor of what we may expect in the labor market, because you'll lay off temporary help before you'll lay off your permanent employees.
• 1:24
  Megan Horneman: And that was lower again for the second consecutive month.
• 1:32
  Megan Horneman: The average hourly earnings actually came in as expected, rising three-tenths for the month, but the year-over-year level is now rising just 3.8%, which is the lowest since July of 2024.
• 1:42
  Megan Horneman: And that's something the Fed's going to watch, because when you look at wages growing, you know three and a half to 4%.
• 1:48
  Megan Horneman: This is better and good for the labor market but also can create this wage pressure spiral.
• 1:55
  Megan Horneman: So the Fed's watching that closely.
• 1:56
  Megan Horneman: The market is moving not at all.
• 1:59
  Megan Horneman: In this labor market report.
• 2:01
  Megan Horneman: We've got another down day in the equity markets and this is primarily driven by the fact that we have some retaliatory measures taken by China today on our tariffs.
• 2:09
  Megan Horneman: So we're still in this tariff tornado.
• 2:12
  Megan Horneman: I guess you could say uncertainty still is the big theme in the markets Now.
• 2:17
  Megan Horneman: We'll be back next week.
• 2:18
  Megan Horneman: We'll come back with impact reports as we see fit, and I know there's some probably going to be some negotiations or headlines over the weekend over from the tariff perspective, but we also have a big week regarding inflation.
• 2:30
  Megan Horneman: We'll get CPI and PPI as well as the meeting minutes from the Fed's March meeting.
• 2:35
  Megan Horneman: Thank you very much, and if you want a further history of our podcast, you can go to marketswithmegan.
• 2:39
  Megan Horneman: fm.
• 2:39
  Megan Horneman: Thank you.