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The U.S. added 227,000 jobs in November, setting in motion potential Fed rate cuts at the end of the year

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227,000 jobs were added to the economy in November.  (iStock )

November saw a higher rise in job numbers than originally expected. Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 227,000, while the unemployment rate bumped up slightly to 4.2%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Health care, hospitality and government industries largely led the drive in job growth.

“Although payroll employment rebounded in November with a gain of 227,000 jobs, and the prior months were revised upwards by a cumulative 56,000 jobs, the report overall shows more softening in the labor market,” Mike Fratantoni, MBA senior vice president and chief economist, said in response to the latest report.

“The household survey again showed a large drop in employment, and more households reported spells of long-term unemployment,” Fratantoni said.

The job growth numbers are strong, but with unemployment changing little, many Americans are still struggling to find work. The retail industry was the one that lost the most jobs in November, losing 28,000 jobs.

Compared to last year, the jobless rate is still high at 4.2%. This time last year, the unemployment rate was 3.7%.

The health care sector had a good month in November, adding 54,000 jobs. Employment and leisure industries added a similar number of jobs last month, at 53,000. This is similar to the number of jobs the industry added in October.

Government employment also trended upward, adding 33,000 jobs in November, which is on par with the average monthly gain of 41,000 seen over the prior 12 months. Transportation and equipment manufacturing added a similar 32,000 jobs as well, largely thanks to the return of Boeing workers who were on strike in previous months.

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INFLATION SEES THE LOWEST ANNUAL RISE SINCE 2021

Fed likely to announce rate cuts in December

A steady job market and a rising unemployment rate has the potential to sway any interest rate cuts set to be announced at the Federal Reserve’s December meeting.

“Fed officials have pointed to their ‘data dependence’ when it comes to decisions about future rate cuts,” Fratantonie said. “These data support a cut at the December meeting. MBA forecasts that the Fed will continue to reduce short-term rates in 2025, although they are likely to slow the pace of cuts.”

The labor market has started to stabilize, but it is still stagnant, as the unemployment rate shows. Experts suspect this will lead to rate cuts intended to help restart sectors of the economy. The results of the inflation report set to come out in the middle of December will also contribute to the final decision on the Fed’s part.

After December’s rate decision, 2025 looks murky when it comes to more interest rate cuts. Many experts expect a slow-down on rate cuts.

“The balance of risks is shifting toward less rate cuts next year,” said Oren Klachkin, Nationwide financial market economist. “They’ll be navigating a bit in the dark, so we think they’ll take it slowly.”

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FHFA ANNOUNCES HIGHER MORTGAGE LOAN LIMITS FOR 2025

Consumer sentiment rises for the fifth month in a row

Consumer sentiment is a mixed bag, but it did improve for the fifth consecutive month, preliminary numbers for December found. Sentiment for the economy rose about 3%, the highest reading in seven months.

This month’s rise in sentiment was primarily due to the perception that buying certain durables would help buyers avoid future price increases. Due to the current economic situation, sentiment may not stay up if prices continue rising.

American’s political leanings have an effect on their economic sentiment. December’s report found that Democrats saw declining consumer sentiment while Republicans’ grew, and Independents sat somewhere in the middle.

Democrats as a whole are concerned about the potential economic impacts of future tariff hikes. Many believe an increase in tariffs will lead to a resurgence in inflation. Republicans believe the opposite and think President-elect Trump will usher in a substantial slowdown of inflation.

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SENIORS TO GET MODERATE COST OF LIVING BUMP IN SOCIAL SECURITY PAYMENTS NEXT YEAR

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Treasury Secretary Bessent says market woes are more about tech stock sell-off than Trump’s tariffs

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after doing a television interview on the North Lawn of the White House on March 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the sell-off in the stock market is due more to a sharp pullback in the biggest technology stocks instead of the protectionist policies coming from the Trump administration.

“I’m trying to be Secretary of Treasury, not a market commentator. What I would point out is that especially the Nasdaq peaked on DeepSeek day so that’s a Mag 7 problem, not a MAGA problem,” Bessent said on Bloomberg TV Wednesday evening.

Bessent was referring to Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, whose new language models sparked a rout in U.S. technology stocks in late January. The emergence of DeepSeek’s highly competitive and potentially much cheaper models stoked doubts about the billions that the big U.S. tech companies are spending on AI.

The so-called Magnificent 7 stocks — Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia — started selling off drastically, pulling the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite into correction territory. The tech-heavy benchmark is down about 13% from its record high reached on December 16.

However, the secretary downplayed the impact from President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs, which caught many investors off guard and fueled fears of a re-acceleration in inflation, slower economic growth and even a recession. Many investors have blamed the tariff rollout for driving the S&P 500 briefly into correction territory from its record reached in late February. Wall Street defines a correction as a drop of 10% from a recent high.

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S&P 500, YTD

Trump signed an aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy at the White House Wednesday evening, slapping duties of at least 10% and even higher for some countries. The actions sparked a huge sell-off in the stock market overnight, with the S&P 500 futures declining nearly 4% and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 1,100 points. The losses will likely but the S&P 500 back into correction territory in Thursday’s session.

“It’s going to be fine if we put the best economic conditions in place,” Bessent said in a separate interview on Fox Wednesday evening. “If you go back and look, the stock market actually peaked on the [DeepSeek] Chinese AI announcement. So a lot of what we have seen has been just an idiosyncratic tech sell-off.”

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Conservative cable channel Newsmax shares plunge more than 70% after a dizzying 2-day surge

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A Newsmax booth broadcasts as attendees try out the guns on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022. 

Callaghan O’hare | Reuters

Shares of conservative news channel Newsmax plunged more than 70% on Wednesday as its meteoric rise as a new public company proved to be short-lived.

The stock tumbled a whopping 72% in afternoon trading, following a 2,230% surge in Newsmax’s first two days of trading after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. At one point, the rally gave the company a market capitalization of nearly $30 billion — surpassing the market cap of legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.

Newsmax was listed on the NYSE via a so-called Regulation A offering, instead of a traditional IPO. Such an offering allows small companies to raise capital without undergoing the full SEC registration process. The primary focus is to sell to retail investors, in this case It was sold to approximately 30,000 retail investors. 

The public offering indeed garnered the attention from retail traders, some of whom touted the stock as the “New GME” in online chatrooms. GME refers to the meme stock GameStop, which made Wall Street history in 2021 by its speculative trading boom.

Newsmax has a small “float,” or shares available for trading. Less than 6% of Newsmax shares, or 7.5 million shares out of a total of 128 million fully diluted shares, are available for public trading.

The conservative TV news outlet has seen its ratings rise with the election of President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans — although it still falls behind the dominant Fox News. Overall, Newsmax ranks in the top 20 among cable network average viewership in both prime time and daytime, Nielsen said.

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: TSLA, DJT, AMZN, RIVN

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