Wall Street steadies as US adds 165,000 jobs; FTSE closes 1% down
The Nasdaq rose 1.1% and the S&P 500 0.3% on Friday after Thursday’s rout, helped by an October jobs report showing 165,000 posts added against a forecast of 59,000 and unemployment falling to 4.1%. The Dow slipped 0.4%. London did not share the relief: the FTSE 100, down as much as 2.35% during the day, closed 1.01% lower, and Brent crude fell 16% over the week to settle at $98.32.
The payroll figures reset the American debate. The two previous months were revised up by 84,000 between them, hourly earnings rose 0.4% on the month and 3.1% on the year, and traders priced a 76.8% chance that the Federal Reserve raises rates at its 8–9 December meeting. Allianz’s Dan North called it “a really, really good report”; Principal’s Seema Shah saw “a strong rebuttal to fears that the economy is heading into a meaningful slowdown”. Yet the underemployment rate climbed to 7.9% and the average spell out of work reached 27.1 weeks, the longest since September 2021. In equities the damage is far from repaired: the Nasdaq sits more than 10% below its peak and is up about 6% on the year, while the FTSE 100, still up roughly 7.5% in 2026, is more than 300 points off July’s record. Microsoft, meanwhile, is trimming its roster of “neocloud” data-centre partners and did not renew a deal with Oracle, a sign the AI build-out is being rationed rather than abandoned. AJ Bell’s Dan Coatsworth framed the question for Monday: “whether the tech trade is going down the pan or fighting back”.