With investors encouraged by a government report that job losses were less than expected, U.S. stocks rose broadly. This is great news for those trying to keep their investment accounts in check despite the ups and downs the stock market has seen since the financial crisis.
About the Jobs Report
On Friday, the Labor Department announced that nonfarm payrolls fell by 36,000 in February. This is compared to a revised 26,000 drop in January. This is great news to economists who expected that the drop would be closer to 75,000 due to the massive storms that hit the East Coast in February.
Other great news on the job front, the unemployment rate remained steady at 9.7 percent. This is much better than the 9.8 percent increase that economists expected.
U.S. Stocks Increased
While U.S. stocks are always a minute-to-minute affair, they rose on Friday morning with the unexpected news that job losses were not nearly as bad as economists thought they would be:
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up 89 points (or 0.9 percent) to hit 10533.25 on Friday morning.
- The Nasdaq Composite index was up 1.1 percent at 2316.89.
- The S&P 500 stock index climbed 1 percent to 1134.80.
In our still turbulent economy, just about anything can make stocks fall, which is why investors are happy that some increases in U.S. stocks were seen. However, the great numbers for job losses may be turned around in March, economists believe, since weather will most likely not play a role in company decisions during the month.
