October Payrolls Smash Estimates at 165K, Jobless Rate Falls to 4.1%

The U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs in October, well above the 65,000 economists had expected, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

The unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, compared with a 4.2% forecast.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.4% from September and 3.1% from a year earlier, against expectations of 0.3% and 2.9%.

The data comes after Thursday’s tech bloodbath, with the Nasdaq 100 – tracked by the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) – tumbling 6.4% in its worst day since March 2020.

Overall, about $3.1 trillion in market value vanished from S&P 500 companies, with Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) alone burning about $447 billion.

This is a developing story.