Event recaps · US payrolls (NFP) history · 5 Apr 2019, 13:30 UK
Back to normal
February 2019's jobs report had been alarmingly weak. This one put hiring back on track. It was a calm report in a calm year for macro and crypto: Bitcoin and Ether rose for an hour, then drifted back, and stocks hardly reacted.
- Release
- Friday 5 April 2019, 13:30 UK
- Payrolls
- +196,000 (BLS)
- February
- Revised to 33,000 from 20,000
- Unemployment
- 3.8%
- Bitcoin at release
- $5,000
The numbers
Employers added 196,000 jobs in March, a rebound from February's first estimate of 20,000, which was revised to 33,000 (BLS, Reuters).
An hour of gains
- 1 14:25 UK: high, about +1.2%
- 2 16:20 UK: low, about 1% down
Bitcoin was +0.42% after five minutes and about 1.2% up at 14:25 UK. It was +0.89% at the hour, #23 of 117 jobs reports at 1.9 times a normal hour. Ether did more, +2.21% at the hour, 3.8 times its normal size, but both were back near flat by two hours. The S&P 500 ETF was +0.11%.
| Market | 15m | 1h | 2h | 4h | 24h | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | +0.73% | +0.89% | +0.18% | +0.19% | +0.24% | 1.9× |
| Ethereum | +0.67% | +2.21% | −0.01% | +0.10% | −0.32% | 3.8× |
| S&P 500 ETF (SPY) | −0.01% | +0.11% | +0.13% | +0.12% | – | – |
| Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ) | +0.02% | +0.11% | +0.15% | +0.14% | – | – |
Change from the 13:30 UK release. The ETFs are measured from the 14:30 UK open.
A quiet year for jobs reports
2019 was a quiet year for jobs-day moves in our data. In March, Bitcoin moved 0.2% in the first hour; in May, 0.4%; in August, 0.2%; in October, less than 0.1%. Single reports rarely moved Bitcoin much that year. This one, at 0.9%, was among the larger 2019 reactions and still faded within two hours.
Across all twelve 2019 jobs reports in our data, this was Bitcoin's largest first-hour move, and Ether's 2.2% was nearly three times its next-largest, 0.8% in November. Ether moved more than Bitcoin here, but in most 2019 reports both moved less than half a percent. When a quiet market suddenly produces its biggest reaction of the year on an unremarkable report, it is worth asking whether something other than the data was driving it.
The fade is the useful part. A first-hour gain that reverses by the second hour, while stocks stay flat, usually reflects short-term positioning rather than a new view on rates. Traders who chased the move would have given it back by 15:30 UK. Bitcoin was +0.24% a day later and +1.5% after a week, close to where it started. Five months later, the September report came with the Fed already cutting rates.
Sources: release time and figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain), first-print values via ALFRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Crypto: Bitstamp 5-minute candles; SPY/QQQ: IEX. No consensus forecasts are shown because they are proprietary; comparisons are with the previous release. “× normal hour” compares the first-hour move with the median move in matched quiet hours. How we measure it.