Stocks rose on Friday and the S&P 500 hit another record high after the June jobs report showed an accelerating recovery for the U.S. labor market.
The broad market index rose 0.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.6% to hit its own intraday all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added more than 100 points.
Solid moves by major tech stocks helped support the overall market, with shares of Apple and Salesforce rising by more than 1% each.
The economy added 850,000 jobs last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were expecting an addition of 706,000. The print topped the 559,000 jobs created in May.
“This is a strong report and should be taken as a sign of things to come for an accelerating labor market,” Aberdeen Standard Investments deputy chief economist James McCann said in a note.
Angelo Kourkafas, an investment strategist at Edward Jones, said that the report showed solid growth but wouldn’t change the Fed’s policy path, hitting a sweet spot for markets.
“I think it was one of these goldilocks-type of reports, because hiring accelerate — which is a positive sign for the second half and the recovery — but not so much that it would trigger a reaction of an accelerated timeline for the Federal Reserve to start tapering,” Kourkafas said.
In addition to the job gains, average hourly wages rose 0.3% for the month and are up 3.6% year over year, matching expectations.
Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius said that the report eased concerns about a labor shortage.
“I think we also learned that the explanations for the weaker numbers from April and May — namely that seasonal probably weighing on job growth and probably some impact from the unemployment benefits on labor supply — that those were pretty good explanations. So I think it was reassuring, in that sense,” Hatzius said, adding that the unemployment rate coming in higher than expected showed that the recovery still had a long way to go.
On Friday, shares of Boeing fell slightly, weighing on the Dow, after a 737 cargo plane made an emergency landing off the coast of Honolulu.
Stocks had been trending upward ahead of Friday’s jobs report, with the S&P 500 setting a string of record highs.
However, market strategists say that uncertainty about the Fed and the upcoming earnings season could keep stocks from making major gains in the near term.
“I think there’s less major catalysts now. The market is still very much concerned about the Fed’s reaction function,” said Max Gokhman, head of asset allocation at Pacific Life Fund Advisors, adding that he thought there was still a lot of slack in the labor market.
For the week, the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.7% as of midday Friday. The S&P 500 and Dow were up about 1.5% and 1%, respectively.
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