Recaps · US payrolls (NFP) · 3 Sep 2021, 13:30 UK
A big miss, a small move
Economists expected about 720,000 new jobs and got 235,000. A miss that size could have changed the Fed's taper plans. Bitcoin rose modestly and US stocks hardly moved. The big crypto move that week came four days later, and it had nothing to do with US jobs.
- Release
- Friday 3 September 2021, 13:30 UK
- Payrolls
- +235,000 (forecast 720,000, CNBC)
- Unemployment
- 5.2% (July: 5.4%)
- July, revised
- 1,053,000
- Bitcoin at release
- $50,115
The report
CNBC called it a shocker: 235,000 jobs against expectations of 720,000, after more than a million in July. The unemployment rate still fell to 5.2%. A weak report made it less likely the Fed would start reducing its bond purchases soon, which is usually good for risk assets.
The reaction
- 1 13:30 UK: release, about +0.9%
- 2 15:30 UK: high, about +1.9%
Bitcoin rose +0.96% on the release candle and drifted up to about 1.9% at 15:30 UK. It was +1.36% after an hour, #14 of 117 jobs reports at 2.9 times a normal hour. Ether hardly moved: -0.10% at the hour. The S&P 500 ETF was +0.26% at four hours.
| Market | 5m | 1h | 4h | 24h | 1w | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | +0.96% | +1.36% | +0.98% | +0.06% | −8.10% | 2.9× |
| Ethereum | +0.34% | −0.10% | +0.46% | −0.82% | −14.37% | 0.2× |
Change from the 13:30 UK release.
Context from 2021's jobs reports
2021's jobs reports produced uneven Bitcoin moves. The June report was followed by a 2.9% first hour. In August Bitcoin was flat at the hour but 3.9% up at four hours, and in October it barely moved. This miss was one of the biggest of the year, but the reaction was middling. By then the market cared more about when the Fed would taper than about any single month. One weak month did not change that much. The Fed announced its taper on 3 November anyway, and at the December 2021 meeting it doubled the pace.
Four days later
On Tuesday 7 September El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender. Reuters and Bloomberg reported that Bitcoin fell as much as 17% that day, to about $43,000, amid exchange outages and problems with the government's Chivo wallet. That is why Bitcoin was -8.1% and Ether -14.4% a week after this report. Crypto-specific news outweighed the jobs data.
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.