Recaps · US payrolls (NFP) · 6 Dec 2024, 13:30 UK
A rebound month, and a steady climb
The October 2024 jobs report had been almost useless: hurricanes and a strike at Boeing had knocked the number down to 12,000. November's report was the first clean read in two months, and it was solid but not hot. Crypto rose slowly and didn't give the gains back.
The figures
Payrolls rose 227,000 in November. October was revised up to 36,000, and September to 255,000. Reuters reported that hiring bounced back as the effects of Hurricane Milton and the Boeing strike faded. The unemployment rate rose from 4.1% to 4.2%.
Revisions like this are a reminder that the first print of a jobs number is an estimate. October went from 12,000 to 36,000 in a month. In our data we always use the figure as it was first published on the day, because that is what traders saw.
The context
Bitcoin had crossed $100,000 for the first time in the early hours of 5 December, UK time, after President-elect Trump picked Paul Atkins to lead the SEC. At 13:30 UK on 6 December it was $98,080.
This was a test of whether a market near record levels would react to a merely good number. In the first five minutes, Bitcoin moved +0.44%, and US stocks were almost as quiet, with the S&P 500 ETF +0.23% after an hour. Neither market treated the report as a big surprise.
Slow and steady
- 1 15:30 UK: Ether and Cardano jump
- 2 16:10 UK: Bitcoin's high, about 1.6% up
Bitcoin was +1.31% after an hour, 2.5 times a normal hour, #21 of 117 jobs reports in our data. It never fell meaningfully below its release price in the four-hour window and was +1.44% at the end of it.
Around two hours in, the alts pulled away. Ether went from +1.8% at the hour to +4.6% at two hours, and Cardano from +1.2% to +5.4%. That timing points to something other than the jobs data.
| Market | 1h | 2h | 4h | 1w | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Litecoin | +2.06% | +1.66% | +2.44% | −8.88% | 2.7× |
| XRP | +1.92% | +3.65% | +4.82% | +3.96% | 2.4× |
| Dogecoin | +1.92% | +3.12% | +3.10% | −4.12% | 3.1× |
| Ethereum | +1.79% | +4.56% | +4.63% | +1.77% | 2.7× |
| Solana | +1.54% | +2.20% | +2.82% | −3.87% | 2.2× |
| Bitcoin | +1.31% | +1.10% | +1.44% | +2.06% | 2.5× |
| Cardano | +1.18% | +5.42% | +5.48% | −4.25% | 1.8× |
| Chainlink | +1.08% | +4.07% | +4.50% | +22.73% | 1.4× |
Change from the 13:30 UK release, sorted by the first hour.
Over the week, Chainlink stood out at +22.7%, while Litecoin was -8.9%. Bitcoin was +2.1%. A clean, middling report met a market already near its highs, and the reaction stayed small.
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.