#Gate广场创作者新春激励

💥Non-farm payroll data once again shows a mixed picture, and the Federal Reserve's rate cut in January has become a certainty!

The December employment data drama unfolds: only 50,000 new jobs added, a cut of 76,000 from the previous month, marking the worst performance since the pandemic. The hiring market has completely dried up, with only 584,000 jobs added for the whole year—less than 61,000 per month in the private sector— the weakest since 2003!

But that's not even the most outrageous part: the unemployment rate actually dropped to 4.4%. What's going on? The answer is quite painful—it's not that more jobs are available, but that more and more people are simply not looking for work anymore. Some influential figures even say this is a signal of the Fed's "lying flat" trend.

The only somewhat acceptable point is that wages increased by 3.8%, which indeed outpaced inflation. But ultimately, the entire labor market is like a patient forced to hold on, seemingly solid on the surface but actually teetering on the edge.

Market reactions are very direct: the probability of rate cuts in January in the interest rate swap market instantly drops to zero, with all bets on the first rate cut being moved to June. The two-year U.S. Treasury yield soared, and traders have completely entered "wait-and-see" mode, with no one daring to act.

PGIM bluntly states that the Fed might "skip a rate cut," while Natixis believes the entire rate cut pace needs to slow down. The suspense ultimately points to the March CPI data—that will be the real test for the Fed. Will rate cuts start in June? It all depends on whether inflation gives face. The future of the dollar remains uncertain!