{"id":475835,"date":"2026-02-12T20:57:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T20:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/475835\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T20:57:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T20:57:19","slug":"first-light-news-a-tale-of-two-labour-markets-headline-strength-masks-underlying-weakness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/475835\/","title":{"rendered":"First Light News \u2013 A Tale of Two Labour Markets: Headline Strength Masks Underlying Weakness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The large revisions help rationalise the lacklustre market reaction following the announcement. Take the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fxempire.com\/currencies\/usd-jpy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">USD\/JPY<\/a>, for example. We saw an initial pop higher with gains swiftly pared, reflecting the mixed data. US equity indexes actually ended the day largely flat \u2013 a notably muted reaction for what would typically be considered a strong jobs print.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding job growth, health care alone accounted for 82,000 positions. This narrow breadth, along with disappointing US data in the lead-up to the jobs report, could also have been behind yesterday\u2019s messy price action.<\/p>\n<p>Fed Implications<\/p>\n<p>Although the jobs report was essentially a tale of two halves, I believe it provides the Fed some breathing room to focus on the inflation side of its mandate for now, as price pressures remain above the central bank\u2019s 2.0% target.<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s January CPI report will be interesting; economists expect the MM readings to remain around 0.3%, above the 0.1-0.2% pace needed to meet the Fed\u2019s target. Both headline and core YY measures are forecast to ease to 2.5% from 2.7% and 2.6%, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to the announcement, June was fully priced in for the Fed\u2019s first rate cut this year, though July is now in focus (-27 bps). As of writing, March is pretty much off the table (-3 bps), with April\u2019s meeting equally doubtful (-6 bps).<\/p>\n<p>Market Snapshot and What\u2019s Ahead<\/p>\n<p>For Stocks, as I noted, US benchmarks were ultimately flat yesterday, though Asian equities continued to extend their gains overnight. South Korea\u2019s KOSPI jumped 3.3% to refresh all-time highs of 5,522, with Australia\u2019s ASX 200 also climbing 0.3% to 9,043. Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225, however, ended flat, following strong gains this week after PM Sanae Takaichi\u2019s landslide victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The large revisions help rationalise the lacklustre market reaction following the announcement. Take the USD\/JPY, for example. We&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,20024,12063,2005,164,56522,40464,5284,16366,10253,140550,38182,29794,5463,9069,5285,2004,56524,9065,163009],"class_list":["post-475835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-commodities","tag-daily","tag-dow-jones","tag-economy","tag-forex","tag-gbp-usd","tag-gold","tag-ignore","tag-indices","tag-kospi","tag-nasdaq-100","tag-nikkei","tag-sp-500","tag-sp-asx-200","tag-silver","tag-stocks","tag-us-dollar-index","tag-usd-jpy","tag-wti-crude-oil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}