Bitcoin And Ethereum Price Rebounds On US Jobs Data, Crypto Market Crash Averted?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the crucial nonfarm payrolls and unemployment rate data for the month of February today. According to the data, nonfarm payrolls come in at 311K, against 205K and the unemployment rate rises to 3.6% against the expected 3.4% in February.

Traders are closely watching the U.S. jobs data as strong growth of 517K in January and low unemployment rate will make the U.S. Federal Reserve continue rate hikes for longer and announce a 50 bps rate hike this month. However, the U.S. CPI inflation data on March 14 will ultimately clear doubts over Fed monetary policy in the coming months.

Stock futures tied to Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq 100 reverses to green, but investors remain cautious amid the crucial data. Fed Chair Jerome Powell earlier claimed a possibility of sharper interest rate hikes as inflation continues to rise, but recession risk is also considered.

The CME FedWatch Tool clearly indicates a 55.3% probability of a 25 bps rate hike in March. It increased from 44.3% a few hours earlier. Also, the US dollar index (DXY) also fell below 105. However, the pressure is still there on the crypto market.

Also Read: Can Bitcoin Price Crash To Sub-$15K And Ethereum $1K?

Wall Street On U.S. Jobs Data

Wall Street expects slower but strong jobs growth in the coming months, the unemployment rate to rise due to U.S. jobless claims rising in February. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4% in January.

Most Wall Street firms including JPMorgan, Lloyds, Credit Suisse, ING, BMO, Barclays expected nonfarm payrolls at 200K, while Goldman Sachs, Nomura, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, and UBS estimate over 250K jobs in February.

“January payrolls benefited from an extremely low seasonal hurdle, minus 3 million jobs, while February requires the addition of at least 770,000 jobs in order to record a positive payroll number,” said Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley.

Meanwhile, almost all banks expected the unemployment rate to come in at 3.4% and wages to rise 0.3%, the same as that in January. However, the annual pay growth rate likely accelerated to 4.7% from 4.4%.

The crypto market rebounds with Bitcoin price rising over $20K, up 2% in an hour. Ethereum price rebounds over 2% to $1,426. But both top crypto remains in red after sharp fall earlier.

Also Read: Biggest Crisis Ever For Crypto Market? Crash To Continue?