Wall Street slips after late jobs report sends mixed signals on the economy

With input from CNBC, Reuters, and AP.

Stocks dipped Tuesday after traders finally got their hands on November’s jobs report — a delayed release that landed with a thud, not because the headline was awful, but because the details screamed “softening.”

The S&P 500 fell 0.5%, the Nasdaq slid 0.4%, and the Dow dropped 238 points (about 0.5%) as investors tried to square a modest hiring gain with a jump in unemployment — and an ugly revision for October.

On the surface, November looked okay. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy added 64,000 jobs, topping the 45,000 gain economists expected (per a Dow Jones survey).

But October was a different story. The report showed 105,000 jobs were lost that month. And the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.6%, slightly higher than the 4.5% economists were expecting — enough to stir fresh nerves about whether the economy is cooling faster than investors want.

“Job growth came in better than the consensus expectation, but not enough to give an all-clear sign as unemployment ticked up,” said Scott Helfstein, head of investment strategy at Global X.

He added that it keeps “another Fed cut for early next year on the table,” which could help steady stocks into year-end.

Even with unemployment edging higher, traders didn’t suddenly start pricing in a quick rescue cut from the Federal Reserve.

The CME FedWatch Tool still showed little chance of a rate cut in January, with fed funds futures implying about a 24% probability — basically unchanged from the day before.

So the market reaction was less “rate cuts are coming” and more “the labor market is losing altitude, and we’re not sure what comes next.”

Tuesday’s weakness also followed a down Monday, where selling hit some of the market’s biggest AI-linked names — the same stocks that have carried a lot of portfolios this year.

Broadcom dropped 5.6% Monday. ServiceNow got hammered 11.5%. Oracle fell 2.7%. Microsoft ended lower too, as investors kept rotating out of high-flying AI trades and into more defensive corners like health care and utilities.

The broader backdrop is still positive — the market’s heading for a winning year, and gains have been spread across all 11 S&P 500 sectors — but the tone has clearly shifted from “straight up” to “prove it.”

Meanwhile in DC, Kevin Hassett, the National Economic Council director and one of the names reportedly in the mix to succeed Jerome Powell as Fed chair, used the moment to emphasize the importance of an independent central bank.

“The Federal Reserve’s independence is really, really important,” Hassett said, adding that the way to steer rate decisions is “with consensus based on the facts and the data.”

Tuesday wasn’t a panic — more like a market exhale. The jobs report didn’t collapse, but it also didn’t deliver reassurance. Hiring is up, but not by much. Unemployment is drifting higher. And with rate-cut odds basically unchanged, investors are stuck in that familiar late-cycle mood: watching every data point like it might be the one that changes the story.