Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on March 02, 2026 in New York City. <\/p>\n
Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images<\/p>\n
The 10-year Treasury<\/a> yield slipped on Friday, though its loss was contained as investors assessed the likely inflation impact resulting from higher crude oil prices tied to the war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n The benchmark\u00a010-year Treasury\u00a0yield fell less than 2 basis points to 4.127%. The\u00a030-year Treasury<\/a>\u00a0yield was little changed at 4.754%. The 2-year Treasury<\/a>\u00a0yield was more than 5 basis points lower at 3.544%. <\/p>\n The spread between the 2-year and the 10-year Treasury widened to more than 58 basis points, which might reflect higher expectations of future inflation. <\/p>\n One basis point is equal to 0.01%, and yields and prices move in opposite directions.<\/p>\n The move higher in Treasury yields came after U.S. West Texas Intermediate topped $90 a barrel<\/a> on the seventh day of the Iran war as President Donald Trump demanded an unconditional surrender<\/a> from the Islamic Republic. Global oil benchmark Brent crude broke above $92 a barrel.<\/p>\n “Obviously the higher energy price is going to push up headline CPI inflation mechanically,” Atakan Bakiskan, chief U.S. economist at Berenberg, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe<\/a>” on Friday.<\/p>\n The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the U.S. on Thursday had jumped\u00a0nearly 27\u00a0cents from the week before, to\u00a0$3.25, according to data from travel organization AAA.<\/p>\n Fixed-income investors looked past a surprise decline in February payrolls, with U.S. employers unexpectedly shedding 92,000 jobs <\/a>in February and the unemployment rate rising to 4.4%. Economists polled by Dow Jones has expected the Bureau of Labor Statistics to say 50,000 jobs were added to the economy last month, and unemployment would be unchanged at 4.3%. <\/p>\n “Today’s numbers may have put the Fed between a rock and a hard place,” wrote Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. “Significant weakening in the labor market would support a rate cut, but given the risk that higher-for-longer oil prices could trigger another inflation surge, the Fed may feel compelled remain on the sidelines.”<\/p>\n Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box<\/a>” on Friday that one month’s jobs data won’t decide the course of Fed policy and that she would prefer to look at the two-month average<\/a> of January \u2014 when the economy added a downwardly revised 126,000 new jobs \u2014 and February combined. <\/p>\n