Recaps · US payrolls (NFP) · 7 Jan 2022, 13:30 UK
A weak headline, a tight market
The headline payrolls number was a big miss. The rest of the report showed a tight labour market, and two days earlier the Fed's minutes had raised the prospect of faster tightening. Bitcoin's first move up lasted five minutes.
- Release
- Friday 7 January 2022, 13:30 UK
- Payrolls
- +199,000 (consensus 400,000, Reuters)
- Unemployment
- 3.9% (November: 4.2%)
- November, revised
- 249,000
- Bitcoin at release
- $42,298
The background
On 5 January the minutes of the Fed's December meeting showed officials discussing earlier rate hikes and shrinking the balance sheet. CoinDesk reported that Bitcoin fell to a one-month low that day. So the jobs report landed on a market already worried about tighter policy.
The report
Payrolls rose 199,000, about half the consensus, Reuters wrote, but the unemployment rate fell from 4.2% to 3.9% and wages kept rising. Reuters called it a mixed report: weak hiring numbers inside a labour market close to full employment. For the Fed, the unemployment rate mattered more.
Five minutes of good news
- 1 13:30 UK: release candle, about +0.6%
- 2 13:40 UK: about 2% down
- 3 15:50 UK: low, about 4% down
Bitcoin rose +0.64% on the release candle, reading the headline miss as a reason for the Fed to slow down. Within ten minutes it was about 2% down. It was -1.01% at the hour, #25 of 117 jobs reports at 1.9 times a normal hour, and reached its low, about 4% down, at 15:50 UK. Reuters reported that Bitcoin touched about $40,938, its lowest since late September. By 17:30 UK it was -0.94%.
| Market | 5m | 15m | 1h | 4h | 24h | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | +0.64% | −2.06% | −1.01% | −0.94% | −0.95% | 1.9× |
| Ethereum | +0.93% | −2.04% | −0.37% | −1.13% | −0.76% | 0.6× |
| XRP | +0.95% | −1.70% | −0.60% | +0.65% | +0.66% | 0.8× |
| Litecoin | +0.58% | −1.88% | −0.32% | +0.40% | +0.07% | 0.4× |
| Chainlink | +0.36% | −3.21% | −0.32% | +6.46% | +2.69% | 0.4× |
| Cardano | −0.80% | −2.38% | −1.73% | −0.27% | −0.66% | 2.7× |
Change from the 13:30 UK release.
Reading a mixed report
When a jobs report sends two signals, the first candle often follows the headline and the next hour follows the detail the Fed cares about. Here the headline said weak, the unemployment rate said tight, and the tight reading won. The Nasdaq-100 ETF was -0.9% at four hours.
The month before, the November report also disappointed on payrolls, and Bitcoin was 3.7% down four hours later. A month after, the January report beat forecasts and Bitcoin was 6.4% up at four hours. In this stretch the move often came after the first hour, so the first candle was a poor guide. Chainlink went its own way: +6.5% at four hours.
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.