Mortgage rates are better today.
Floating into a monthly jobs report is always a huge gamble but for anyone who had the courage to do it this time around it paid off. This morning’s jobs report showed that only 39,000 new jobs were created in the US economy last month. This is about 25% of the new jobs created in October. The unemployment rate ticked up by .2% to 9.8%. The report would have been completely discouraging had it not been for the revisions higher to the September & October figures.
Bad news for the jobs market is often good news for interest rates and that’s what we’re seeing today. Many analysts are commenting this morning that the lower rates will not last given the longer-term trends in the interest rate markets. However, history has shown that rates tend to stabilize or improve following a weaker than expected jobs report for at least a couple weeks. I will shift to a natural position.
Current outlook: neutral