Stocks sagged further Friday, despite a decent July jobs report from the Labor Department.
The U.S. added 164,000 jobs in July, in line with expectations. Unemployment remained at 3.7 percent. Average wages also saw an increase of 3.2 percent from last year, beating expectations. They were up 0.3 percent from June. But some were still concerned.
"Wage growth continues to fall short of what we'd expect in an economy that has had historically low unemployment — the unemployment rate has been at (or below) 4.0 percent for the past 17 months," said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in a release.
While many of the indicators appeared to be in line with averages, it wasn't enough to correct the market plunge sparked Thursday when President Trump announced that the U.S. will impose an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods. Beijing later indicated that it plans to respond in kind, although specific details have not yet been released.
"We'd be growing at a much bigger rate if Trump laid off on the tariffs, left them behind, and tried to make deals in a better way. They are not healthy," said Tim Doescher of Heritage Foundation told Cheddar after the report's release.
There were a few key data points within the report that showed signs of weakness. The average workweek fell to 34.3 hours, the lowest in two years. While the workweek in the manufacturing industry was a longer 40.4 hours, it was also down from the previous month. Overtime hours for the sector also declined.
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Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
