Recaps · US payrolls (NFP) · 7 Feb 2025, 13:30 UK
A softer headline with stronger details
Read only the headline, and January 2025 looked like a weak month for US hiring. Read the revisions and the unemployment rate, and it looked solid. Crypto spent the first hour going up and the next three going back down, ending almost exactly where it started.
The figures
The BLS reported 143,000 new jobs in January, down from December. But December was revised up by 51,000 to 307,000, and November was revised up as well. The unemployment rate fell from 4.1% to 4.0%. Taken together, the details were stronger than the headline.
Up, then down
- 1 14:50 UK: Bitcoin's high, about +2.5%
- 2 17:20 UK: back slightly below the release price
Bitcoin hardly moved on the first candle. It then rose steadily, reaching about 2.5% above the $97,740 release price at 14:50 UK, and was +2.0% at the hour. That ranks #8 of 117 jobs reports in our data, at 3.8 times a normal hour. From there it slid, and four hours after the release it was -0.27%.
US stocks didn't join the early rally. The Nasdaq 100 ETF was -0.7% after an hour, falling after the 14:30 UK open, and -0.8% at four hours.
| Market | 1h | 4h | 24h | 1w | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XRP | +4.67% | +1.19% | +0.74% | +12.09% | 6.0× |
| Cardano | +2.70% | −0.96% | −4.23% | +10.31% | 4.2× |
| Chainlink | +2.60% | −2.91% | −6.19% | −0.78% | 3.3× |
| Dogecoin | +2.21% | −1.31% | −1.33% | +5.50% | 3.6× |
| Bitcoin | +2.00% | −0.27% | −1.58% | −1.20% | 3.8× |
| Solana | +1.97% | −1.01% | −1.37% | −0.53% | 2.8× |
| Ethereum | +1.77% | −2.37% | −4.60% | −2.09% | 2.7× |
| Litecoin | +1.19% | −1.62% | −2.90% | +20.58% | 1.5× |
Change from the 13:30 UK release, sorted by the first hour.
The reversal had a clear shape. Every coin in the table was positive at one hour, and most had turned negative by four hours. Chainlink went from +2.6% at the hour to -2.9% at four hours, the biggest swing in the table.
The outliers
XRP had the strongest first hour, +4.7%, and was the only coin still clearly higher at four hours. Ether was the weakest over the day, -4.6% after 24 hours.
The one-week column has two surprises that have nothing to do with the jobs data: Litecoin +21% and XRP +12%, while Bitcoin was -1.2%. A mid-sized first hour that disappears by the evening is a common pattern for jobs reports in our data, and this is a clean example.
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.