Good Friday is next week and the markets will be closed as usual. However, what will be unusual is that the closing of stock exchanges in the United States and in some other parts of the world occurs when the government is scheduled to release an important report on employment in the midst of a pandemic.
Why is the stock market closed while federal data is being released? That’s because Good Friday, this year, April 2, is not a federal holiday.
It is a very rare occurrence for the government to release important data, since market participants are not able to react to it.
And it has only happened 12 times since 1980, according to the Dow Jones Market Data, with the last time occurring in 2015, and before that it happened in 2012 and 2010.
|
Year |
Dates when non-farm payrolls were released on Good Friday |
|
1980 |
April 4 |
|
1983 |
April 1 |
|
1985 |
April 5th |
|
1988 |
April 1 |
|
1994 |
April 1 |
|
1996 |
April 5th |
|
1999 |
April 2nd |
|
2007 |
April 6 |
|
2010 |
April 2nd |
|
2012 |
April 6 |
|
2015 |
April 3 |
|
2021 |
April 2 (scheduled) |
| Source: Dow Jones Market Data |
The employment report is arguably the grandfather of economic reports, outside of GDP, but its importance has been magnified by the pandemic, especially as market participants seek more evidence about the magnitude of a year’s recovery from one of the worst health crises. public in a century.
The latest job report will come while investors are unsure about the extent to which the labor market and / or the economy can fully recover, or even overheat, potentially forcing the Federal Reserve to act quickly to contain inflation out of control , with the launch of vaccines and about $ 1.9 trillion in new fiscal aid have helped to strengthen the economy.
Fed chief Jerome Powell tried to pacify unstable markets, emphasizing that the central bank will take a slow approach to normalizing policy, which is expected to take years.
National Securities’ chief market strategist, Art Hogan, told MarketWatch that it may be a good thing that the job report arrives while the market is closed.
“Having the weekend to digest this news and calibrate what it means for economic expansion, can be good for the market,” said Hogan.
A year ago, the US non-farm payroll fell 663,000 in March, while the unemployment rate jumped from 8.1% to an 8.5% rise in 26 years.
The 2021 jobs report for March is expected to show a gain of 655,000 based on some estimates, after payroll data showed that unemployment fell to 6.2%, with 379,000 jobs added in February, marking the biggest gain in four months.
It may take some time to pause for the financial markets, says Hogan, because the economy still has a long way to go to achieve a healthy recovery.
“We still have about nine million people outside the workforce. We will need some blockbuster levels to reach pre-pandemic levels, ”said the analyst, estimating that the economy would have about 750,000 jobs per month to reach post-COVID levels.
“It would take us two years, so we really need to start increasing those numbers,” he said.
On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
the S&P 500 SPX index,
the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP,
and the Russell 2000 small cap RUT index,
ended on a high after a busy week of negotiations that ended with a flourish at the end of the session.
Certainly, it will be difficult to say how robust trade action can be on Monday after Good Friday, because a series of global exchanges will be closed in keeping with Easter Monday.