Jobs Data on Target

This week, investors were focused on Friday's monthly Employment report. A high degree of volatility preceded the report, but the net result of the large daily movements was just a small increase in mortgage rates for the week.

Against a consensus forecast of 165K, the economy added 175K jobs in May. There were slight downward revisions to the figures from prior months. The Unemployment Rate unexpectedly increased to 7.6% from 7.5%, but this was entirely due to additional people entering the labor force. As a reminder, the Unemployment Rate measures the percentage of people who want to work but are unable to find a job. If the number of jobs holds steady, and more people decide that they want to work, the Unemployment Rate goes up. In short, there were few surprises in this report.

Given the influence of labor market data on the Fed's bond buying program, the level of daily volatility both ahead of the Employment report and following its release was extremely high. Weaker than expected labor market indicators from ADP and Jobless Claims caused investors to position for a shortfall in the Employment report, pushing mortgage rates a little lower ahead of the data. When the results essentially matched the Wall Street consensus, mortgage rates gave back the improvement. The middle of the road labor market data provides little guidance for investors trying to determine when the Fed will begin to scale back its bond purchases. High levels of volatility are likely to continue ahead of the next Fed meeting on June 19.