Replays · US payrolls (NFP) · 3 May 2024, 13:30 UK
175,000 jobs, and a rally that kept going
Some data releases cause a sharp jump that fades within the hour. The April 2024 jobs report caused a rally that kept building all day. Bitcoin was 1.6% higher five minutes after 13:30 UK time, 3.5% higher at the end of the hour, 4.8% after four hours and 8.1% by the next afternoon.
- Payrolls, first print
- +175k
- Prior month (revised)
- +315k
- Unemployment rate
- 3.9%
- Bitcoin, first hour
- +3.50%
- Rank among NFP releases
- #3 of 117
A softer report after a run of strong ones
The US economy had been adding jobs faster than expected for months, and that strength was a key reason the Fed had kept rates at 5.25–5.50% since July 2023. The April report broke that run. Employers added 175,000 jobs, the smallest first estimate since November 2023. The unemployment rate edged up from 3.8% to 3.9%, and the previous month's gain was revised to 315,000. Wage growth also slowed.
For markets this was close to an ideal mix: no sign of a recession, but enough cooling to put rate cuts back in play. The two-year Treasury yield fell from 4.87% to 4.81%. Two days earlier the Fed had held rates and Powell had said the next move was unlikely to be a hike, so the jobs report landed on a market already leaning that way.
- 1 13:30 UK: the jobs report
The shape of the move
The line chart shows why this one stands out. Bitcoin never went back to its starting point. After the first five-minute candle took it from $59,171 to $60,105, each pullback was shallow, and every half-hour mark after the release was higher than the one before it for the first two hours. A short pause in the third hour was followed by a new high at the four-hour mark.
Ether and Solana followed the same direction but moved less. Solana led in the first 15 minutes and then went quiet. Bitcoin, unusually, outperformed most of the market over the afternoon. The bigger moves came later: Dogecoin rose 20% over the following 24 hours, the most of any market we track.
Before and after
A month earlier, a much stronger March report of 303,000 jobs produced a Bitcoin move of just 0.3% in the hour. The contrast says something about where the market was positioned. After weeks of strong data and a falling crypto price, a soft number was the surprise.
The rally also lasted beyond the day. A week after the report, Bitcoin was still 6.9% above its 13:30 price. It is one of the clearer cases in our data where a single macro release seems to have changed the direction of the market for days, not just minutes.
| Market | 5m | 1h | 4h | 24h | 1w | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | +1.58% | +3.50% | +4.76% | +8.08% | +6.91% | 7.5× |
| Ethereum | +1.43% | +2.37% | +3.71% | +5.56% | +1.95% | 4.0× |
| Solana | +1.59% | +2.92% | +3.66% | +7.00% | +11.34% | 5.2× |
| XRP | +0.77% | +1.13% | +1.51% | +3.56% | −0.64% | 1.6× |
| Dogecoin | +1.55% | +2.99% | +5.16% | +20.46% | +12.97% | 6.0× |
| Litecoin | +0.58% | +1.08% | +2.06% | +2.58% | +3.56% | 1.5× |
| Chainlink | −0.14% | +0.51% | +1.30% | +2.97% | +3.41% | 0.7× |
| Cardano | +1.02% | +2.72% | +3.88% | +4.49% | +3.14% | 4.9× |
Crypto change from the 13:30 UK release time. SPY and QQQ are left out because IEX coverage begins at the 14:30 UK cash open.
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.