By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Job creation in the U.S. slowed sharply in August as the spread of Covid-19 across southern states and the big coastal cities increasingly acted as a brake on hiring.
Nonfarm payrolls expanded by only 235,000 through the middle of last month, the Department of Labor said on Friday. That was far short of expectations for a gain of 750,000.
The numbers all but rule out an early move by the Federal Reserve to start running down the bond purchases that have been the mainstay of its monetary support for the economy since the first wave of the pandemic.
U.S. stock futures turned negative in response to the news, however, seeing negative implications for the strength of the economic recovery. Despite the weak-looking headline number, average earnings growth accelerated to 0.6% on the month, rather than slowing to 0.3% as expected. The annual rate of average earnings accelerated to 4.3%, the highest in six months.
By 8:45 AM ET (1245 GMT), Dow Jones Futures were down 28 points, or 0.1%, while S&P 500 Futures and Nasdaq 100 Futures were down by a similar amount. The yield on the benchmark 10-Year U.S. Treasury bond rose 3 basis points to 1.32%, its highest level in a week.