Mortgage Rates Instantly Drop to 4 Month Lows After Jobs Report

Every month, we offer the same old warning/reminder ahead of the big jobs report–something to the effect of “no other economic report has as much power to cause volatility in rates, for better or worse.”  Days like today are the reason for that reminder. Thankfully, it was the “better” end of the spectrum.

Rates tend to improve when economic data is weaker than expected. Today’s jobs report was only moderately weaker at the headline level (73k vs 110k forecast), but it was the revisions to the past months that really got the market’s attention.  Those revisions removed 253k jobs from the initially reported numbers.

Revisions are a fact of life for the jobs report.  The BLS publishes them in detail: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnaicsrev.htm

This is a tough…