Investors enter risk-off mode after higher-than-expected U.S. jobs data

The crypto market was turning down for the second day on June 7 as market participants reacted to stronger than expected U.S. employment data, which vastly beat expectations to suggest that the labor market was coping with tight fiscal policy better than forecast.

On June 7, the U.S. Labor Department reported the addition of 272,000 jobs in May, far past estimates of just 185,000 and significantly higher than April's 165,000.

In May, the unemployment rate grew to 4.0% for the first time since January 2022, versus estimates for 3.9% and April's 3.9%.

This latest employment data reading has potentially pushed back the odds of the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates — a key prerequisite for a liquidity influx into risk assets and crypto.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is due to meet on June 12 to discuss rates, with markets now seeing little prospect of a cut resulting from the next two such meetings.

According to the CME FedWatch tool, traders are placing the odds of a June 12 rate cut at just 0.6% and July 31 at 8.88% at the time of writing versus 46% for September and 47.4% for November.

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Target rate probabilities for June 18, 2024 Fed meeting. Source: CME

This outlook is adversely affecting risk-on assets such as cryptocurrencies, emerging market stocks, bonds and even commodities.

Bloomberg Chief Economist Anna Wong commented on the data saying that the rise in the unemployment rate is the more important indicator of the reality of the state of employment in the country.

“We believe the latter currently offers a closer approximation of reality than payrolls, as BLS’ model for estimating business births and deaths – which added 231,000 jobs to the nonfarm-payrolls print in May – is lagging the reality of surging establishment closures and falling business formation. We think the underlying pace of current job gains is likely less than 100,000 per month.”