Stock futures rise as traders wait for jobs report

Stock futures opened higher Thursday night, extending gains as investors waited for a key report on the labor market recovery.

S&P 500 contracts soar after the index recorded a third consecutive session of gains during Thursday’s regular trading day. The upward move came after Senate leaders said they had reached an agreement to raise the government’s borrowing limit until December, helping to avoid a default as early as this month. .

As concerns about the public debt ceiling have been pushed back, investors have focused their attention on the latest monthly employment report from the Ministry of Labor. This report should show an acceleration in employment growth after a disappointing impression in August, when just over 200,000 jobs were created against more than 700,000 expected.

Consensus economists expect Friday’s report to show non-farm workforces rose 500,000 in September, with the unemployment rate plunging to 5.1% to hit a new pandemic-era low. Average hourly earnings have likely increased at a rate of 4.6% year-on-year, or the fastest since February, in another paper claiming inflationary pressures are taking place in the US economy.

“I think people want to keep seeing [payroll] wins. People are more obsessed with the jobs created than anything else. I think wages are more important for people who worry about inflation, “Julie Biel, portfolio manager at Kayne Anderson Rudnick, told Yahoo Finance Live on Thursday. The US economy is first and foremost a business. consumer economy … so it’s positive for the economy in the longer term. But it’s negative for profit margins which have reached historic highs. “

The story continues

Although employment has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels, improvements in the labor market have accelerated alongside the decline in coronavirus cases. Other data also highlighted these trends, with new weekly jobless claims at their second lowest since March 2020 on Thursday, and ADP’s private wage report showing 568,000 better-than-expected job gains in September more early this week.

For investors, a strong jobs report would also likely be enough to trigger the start of the Federal Reserve’s slowdown. The central bank already signaled last month that it was inclined to withdraw some of its very accommodative monetary policies as the recovery progressed. And Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said it would only take a “reasonably good report” for September jobs to signal that the labor market had reached the Fed’s threshold for reduction.

–

6:07 p.m. ET Thursday: Stock futures extend past gains

Here’s where the markets were trading on Thursday night:

• S&P 500 Futures Contracts (ES = F): +3.25 points (+ 0.07%), at 4,393.25

• Dow Futures (YM = F): +23 points (+ 0.07%), at 34,661.00

• Nasdaq Futures (NQ = F): +17.50 points (+ 0.12%) to 14,898.75

–

Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter