Event recaps · US payrolls (NFP) history · 6 Sep 2019, 13:30 UK
Cooling, not cracking
By September 2019, the Fed had cut rates once and markets expected more. A softer jobs report fitted that story, and Powell spoke later the same day. Stocks shrugged. Bitcoin slid a little after the release and much more overnight, for reasons that had more to do with crypto than with jobs.
- Release
- Friday 6 September 2019, 13:30 UK
- Payrolls
- +130,000, including about 25,000 temporary Census jobs (Reuters)
- Unemployment
- 3.7%
- Same day
- Powell speech in Zurich (Bloomberg)
- Bitcoin at release
- $10,928
The numbers
Employers added 130,000 jobs in August, with about 25,000 of them temporary hires for the 2020 Census (Reuters). Later that day, in Zurich, Powell said the Fed would act "as appropriate" to sustain the expansion (Bloomberg), which supported bets on another cut.
A small slide
- 1 14:00 UK: about 0.4% down
- 2 14:45 UK: low, about 1.1% down
Bitcoin was -0.12% after five minutes and drifted to about 1.1% down at 14:45 UK. It was -0.78% at the hour, #28 of 117 jobs reports at 1.7 times a normal hour, and -0.37% at four hours. Ether barely moved. The S&P 500 ETF was +0.05% after its first hour.
| Market | 15m | 1h | 4h | 24h | 1w | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | −0.25% | −0.78% | −0.37% | −4.67% | −5.55% | 1.7× |
| Ethereum | −0.20% | −0.19% | −0.43% | −3.01% | +1.30% | 0.3× |
| S&P 500 ETF (SPY) | −0.24% | +0.05% | +0.12% | – | – | – |
| Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ) | −0.33% | −0.12% | −0.01% | – | – | – |
Change from the 13:30 UK release. The ETFs are measured from the 14:30 UK open.
The move that came later
Bitcoin was -4.7% a day later and -5.5% after a week, while Ether was +1.3% over the week. A Bitcoin-led fall with stocks calm and Ether steady points away from the jobs data and the Fed, which would have affected all of them.
The first-hour fall of 0.8% was Bitcoin's largest drop after any 2019 jobs report in our data, and only the April report produced a bigger move in either direction. Even so, it was smaller than the slide over the following day. Ether fell just 0.2% in the first hour, which again suggests the jobs data was not the main driver.
The comparison with the July 2019 Fed decision is useful. That was the first rate cut since 2008, and Bitcoin moved only 0.5% in its first hour. In 2019 the link between US policy and crypto was weak in both directions: cuts did not lift Bitcoin much, and softer jobs data did not either. Readers comparing these recaps with 2022 should keep that in mind. Here a softer report moved Bitcoin less than 1% in its first hour.
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.