Recaps · US payrolls (NFP) · 2 Jul 2021, 13:30 UK
Beat or miss, Bitcoin went up
Two months after a huge miss, this report beat forecasts comfortably. In a strict "good news is bad news" market, Bitcoin should have fallen. It rose, steadily, for four hours. In mid-2021 the link between jobs data and crypto was looser than it became a year later.
- Release
- Friday 2 July 2021, 13:30 UK
- Payrolls
- +850,000 vs 706,000 expected (CNBC)
- Unemployment
- 5.9% vs 5.6% expected
- May
- Revised up to 583,000
- Bitcoin at release
- $32,923
The numbers
Employers added 850,000 jobs, the most in ten months (Reuters), and May was revised up. But the unemployment rate rose to 5.9%, against a forecast of 5.6% (CNBC). Wages rose 0.3% on the month, in line with expectations. The report was strong on hiring but mixed overall, which gave both sides of the rate debate something to point to.
A steady climb
- 1 13:30 UK: first candle about +0.7%
- 2 17:20 UK: high, about +2.7%
Bitcoin was +0.63% after five minutes and kept rising: +1.37% at the hour, #13 of 117 jobs reports at 2.9 times a normal hour, and about 2.7% up at 17:20 UK. Every major coin in our data moved up together. The S&P 500 ETF was +0.05% after its first hour.
| Market | 5m | 1h | 4h | 24h | 1w | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | +0.63% | +1.37% | +1.99% | +5.17% | −0.42% | 2.9× |
| Ethereum | +0.79% | +1.23% | +4.03% | +9.21% | +2.02% | 2.1× |
| XRP | +0.81% | +1.17% | +2.39% | +5.61% | −3.96% | 1.7× |
| Litecoin | +0.96% | +1.40% | +2.42% | +5.71% | −2.74% | 2.0× |
| Chainlink | +1.04% | +1.61% | +3.46% | +6.86% | +3.00% | 2.3× |
Change from the 13:30 UK release.
Three reports, one direction
The April report in May was a big miss, and Bitcoin rose 1.2% in the first hour. The May report in June was also below forecasts, and Bitcoin rose 2.9%. This one beat forecasts, and Bitcoin rose 1.4%. Three different surprises gave three gains in the first hour.
That pattern says more about the market than the data. Bitcoin had fallen by about half from its April peak and was trading near $33,000, and it was 0.5% lower in the hour before this release. With the Fed still buying bonds and not yet hiking, a single jobs report did not change the rate outlook much. In that setting, release-time moves often followed short-term positioning rather than the headline. By 2022, when every report fed straight into hike expectations, the direction of the surprise mattered far more. Ether was +9.2% a day later; Bitcoin was -0.4% after a week.
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.