Wall Street slumped anew on Friday in the market's latest bout of dizzying trading, with tech stocks faring the worst. The S&P 500 fell 38 points, or 0.8%, to 4,538. That's after five straight days in which the benchmark index swerved by at least 1.2%, pounded by uncertainty about how badly the newest coronavirus variant will hit the economy and about when the Federal Reserve will halt its immense support for financial markets, per the AP. The Dow fell 59 points, or 0.1%, to 34,580; while the tech-dominated Nasdaq fell 295 points, or 1.9%, to 15,085. All three indexes were down for the week.
“We got some mixed messages" on the latest jobs report, "and that can make for some messy markets,” said Brian Jacobsen of Allspring Global Investments. The report showed employers added only 210,000 jobs last month. It was a disappointing result when economists were expecting much stronger hiring of 530,000, and it raised worries the economy may stagnate while inflation remains high. That's a worse-case scenario called “stagflation” by economists, and the omicron variant's arrival makes its likelihood more uncertain.
But other areas of the jobs report showed better strength. More people are coming back to the workforce, and the unemployment rate improved to 4.2% from 4.6%. Some investors said the jobs report could ultimately push the Fed to get more aggressive about raising short-term interest rates off their record low. Others, though, said they expected the mixed report to have no effect, and the wide differences in opinion helped lead to the day's sharp swings in the market.
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