U.S. equity indexes opened higher Friday morning, with the main benchmarks carving out fresh records, as investors focused on the longer-term economic outlook after the jobs report for December showed the first monthly job losses since April amid an acceleration of cases of COVID-19.
What’s driving the market? Stock were buoyant on Friday after the closely followed report on jobs showed that the U.S. economy lost 140,000 jobs in December, well below forecast of a gain of 55,000. “With large swaths of the U.S. economy shut down throughout December to combat the spread of Covid-19, it’s no surprise that the economy lost jobs in December,” wrote James McDonald, CEO and chief investment officer of Hercules Investments.
“As we had highlighted in prior publications, measures put in place to stop the spread of COVID-19 had a big impact this month, specifically in the leisure and hospitality sector where payrolls fell 498K,” wrote Jefferies analysts Thomas Simons and Aneta Markowska, in a note after the data was published.
The chaos in the Capitol has led to resignations by some members of Trump’s administration, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, and the first lady’s chief of staff as well as a top official who dealt with China.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.