Why I Think Investors Should Feel Good About January Economic Data
After several months of parsing through incomplete data sets tied to the government shutdown, we finally received a clean January print with complete inflation and jobs numbers. Investors should be encouraged by what they see, but not because the data showed the economy is booming.
Instead, what we see is that the balance of risks appears to be shifting.
Let’s start with jobs. January payrolls rose by 130,000, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3%. On the surface, that looks like stabilization in the labor market, which is welcome news. But it’s not actually the reason I think investors should feel upbeat. The more consequential part of the jobs report was what it told us about 2025.
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