Trump calls July jobs report “rigged”

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July’s jobs report revised previous months’ figures down so dramatically that U.S. President Donald Trump called it “RIGGED” and “CONCOCTED.”

Markets, however, seem to have shrugged off their worries for now — U.S. stocks rebounded Monday from the sell-off on Friday after the report was released. The move, however, could be more an instinctive reflex than a reflection of what’s really driving markets.

“Today is sort of a bounce-back day,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. “Stocks tend to pop after a drop, so that’s what’s happening.”

“We have to wait and see what happens tomorrow, because there could be a possibility that investors think, ‘You know what, we really need to take some money off the table to digest some of these gains,'” he added.

Trump’s new tariffs come into force on Aug. 7, so there’s a possibility investors could seize this opportunity, when markets have recovered slightly from Friday’s losses, to take profit first — and before any further slowdown, as suggested by July’s jobs report, is potentially “rigged” and strikes the U.S. economy.

Contentious July jobs report confirms the U.S. economy is slowing sharply. Here’s why

Nonfarm payrolls rose by just 73,000 in July, below even the muted expectations. Heavy downward revisions to the May and June count took the three-month average job gains down to just 35,000, or less than one-third the pace for the same period a year ago.

Traditionally a lagging indicator when it comes to recessions, the weakness in job growth points to an economy that may be slowing even more than some of the traditional metrics are showing.

— Jeff Cox