Are You Locked ? Friday's Job Report May Move Mortgage Rates.
If you’re floating a mortgage rate, or have yet to lock one in, today may be a good day to call your loan officer. Friday morning, the government releases its Non-Farm Payrolls report at 8:30 AM ET.
The Non-Farm Payrolls report is more commonly called the “jobs report” and, lately, it’s been Wall Street’s domestic economic metric of choice. As jobs go, so go markets.
In the 12 months beginning November 2007, the economy shed 2.3 million on its way to losing more than 7 million jobs by the end of 2009.
It’s no coincidence that the stock market has been wayward. Jobs are a keystone in the U.S. economy and the connection between jobs and growth is straight-forward :
- Workers spend more than non-workers and consumer spending is the economy’s largest single component
- Workers pay more taxes to governments and, when governments have money, they build and spend on projects
- Additional consumer and government spending creates revenue for businesses which, in turn, hire more workers.
It’s a self-reinforcing (more…)