It goes by many names: The Employment Situation, Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP), or simply “the jobs report.” No matter what you call it, the Labor Department’s massive collection of employment statistics is one of the most important events for the bond market every month. For a quick reminder as to why mortgage rates care about the bond market, here’s a chart of relative movement in the average 30yr fixed mortgage rate and 10yr Treasury Yields (the quintessential bond market benchmark). You may notice that rates have been moving higher recently, and that’s where our journey intersects with Friday’s jobs report. In short, the government’s official job tally of 194k (new jobs created) fell extremely short of the median forecast calling for 500k. At almost any other time in history, this would have sent
Mortgage Rates Newsletter – Market Analysis