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Investing.com — U.S. stock markets opened strongly higher on Friday in response to a blowout employment report for February that allowed the prospect of a strong recovery to outweigh fears of higher interest rates for once this week.
By 9:35 AM ET (1435 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 224 points, or 0.7%, at 31,148, while the S&P 500 was up 0.5% and the Nasdaq Composite – again underperforming – rose 0.1%.
Earlier, the government had said that the U.S. economy had added 379,000 jobs in February, almost double the consensus forecast for 182,000 and a dramatic acceleration from the past two months. January’s payroll growth was also revised up by over 100,000 to 166,000.
“A very strong jobs report for February is just the start,” said James Knightley, chief international economist with ING, in a note to clients. “Construction is set to rebound next month after winter storms and with more state Governors relaxing Covid containment measures we expect to see even better numbers in March and April.”
He expected further support for the job market from the rapid rollout of vaccines across the country in the second quarter. U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier this week that the country will have enough vaccine for all adults by the end of May – two months ahead of his previous estimate. That’s because the Food and Drug Administration has now approved a one-shot vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) that allows the inoculation campaign to be ramped up more quickly. The U.S. is currently vaccinating more than 2 million people a day.
