Economists predicted that the number of jobs added last month would be 160,000 ahead of the employment report, however, the actual figure was lower than expected. The report follows a month of widespread federal layoffs through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), immigration crackdowns, and reigniting Trump’s trade war. Economists predicted that it could be too soon for the impact of the DOGE layoffs to show up in the jobs data because the report was based on surveys carried out in the second week of February, but it still showed a decline of 10,000 jobs in federal employment and set the stage for an increase in unemployment later in the year.
Despite the drop in federal employment, employment trended up in...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
