Treasury yields rose Friday as traders braced for the all-important jobs report that could reveal the strength of the U.S. labor market, following an unusually weak payrolls number in February.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield TMUBMUSD10Y, +0.92% climbed 2.5 basis points to 2.537%. The 2-year note yield TMUBMUSD02Y, +0.89% was up 1.9 basis points to 2.356%, while the 30-year bond yield TMUBMUSD30Y, +0.63% rose 2.3 basis points to 2.944%. Bond prices move inversely to yields.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the March employment report at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. Economists polled by MarketWatch are forecasting the U.S. economy added 177,000 jobs, up from a paltry 20,000 in February. Average hourly earnings are expected to increase 0.3%, and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 3.8%.
See: Job creation seen rebounding in March after February freeze
“All eyes on Friday will be focused on the BLS report in order to confirm that February’s 20k was a one-off aberration in an otherwise healthy labor market,” wrote Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at BMO Capital Markets.
So far, investors have come up against mixed signs of the labor market’s strength this week. The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits at the end of March fell to 202,000, its lowest level 1969, even as the Automatic Data Processing reported that private-sector employers had hired much fewer people than analysts had expected.
Read: How stock-market bulls risk getting caught off guard by another ugly jobs report
On the trade front, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported that President Xi Jinping has written in a letter to President Donald Trump calling for negotiations to end the U.S.-China trade dispute as soon as possible. This comes after Trump earlier Thursday said the talks “have a ways to go, but not very far.”
Providing critical information for the U.S. trading day. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Need to Know newsletter. Sign up here.
