Equity Markets Continued to Slide Last Week

Stocks suffered through their worst week since September, with each of the major benchmark indexes falling more than 2.3% with the exception of the Global Dow, which gained less than 1.0%. Investors faced trade tensions, policy uncertainty and a slightly weaker-than-expected jobs report. Each of the market sectors declined last week, with the exception of health care. Information technology dropped more than 7.4%. Last Friday, reassurance from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that the economy remained solid helped quell some of the angst among investors, which helped push bond yields higher at week’s end. Crude oil prices rallied on Friday but not enough to prevent a weekly decline of over 4.0%.

February Employment Data Released

Employment rose by 151,000 in February, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. February’s job gains were below the average over the past 12 months (168,000). In February, employment trended up in health care, financial activities, transportation and warehousing, and social assistance. Federal government employment declined. The unemployment rate ticked up 0.1 percentage point to 4.1% last month, while the number of unemployed rose by 203,000 to 7.1 million. The labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio each declined 0.2 percentage point to 62.4% and 59.9%, respectively. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 1.5 million, changed little in February. The long-term unemployed accounted for 20.9% of all unemployed people. In February, average hourly earnings rose by $0.10, or 0.3%, to $35.93. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 4.0%. In February, the average workweek was unchanged at 34.1 hours.

Eye on the Week Ahead

The latest reports on inflation are available this week with the releases of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Producer Price Index (PPI). The CPI was 3.0% for the year ended in January, while the PPI was up 3.5% from the year before.