Friday, March 6th, 2026
This morning, the Employment Situation report for February from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) came out at a disappointing headline figure of -92K, well below the +50K analysts had been expecting, and an even bigger drop from the downwardly revised +126K for January. The Unemployment Rate bumped back up 10 basis points (bps) to +4.4%.
Harsh weather conditions last month played a role, as did a 41-day nursing strike which helped take Healthcare sector numbers to -28K for the month. However, downward revisions really struck the December print, which went from +50K initially reported to -17K in today’s report. There’s no blaming weather or strike conditions for this. We now see a trailing four-month average on BLS jobs at -21K per month — the first negative average since the Covid pandemic.
Healthcare, as we said, shed -28K positions last month, while both Info Systems and Transportation/Warehousing dropped -11K and Government jobs sank by -10K. Social Assistance jobs stayed afloat at +9K, but any way you slice it, this was a bad employment report. Over the past year, Transportation/Warehousing has lost -157K jobs, -2.4%.
Bright spots are slight: Hourly Wages, both month over month and year over year, added +10 bps from expectations, to +0.4% and +3.8%, respectively. The Average Workweek dropped to 33.8 hours, Labor Force Participation slipped to +62.0% (the lowest since December 2021) and the U-6 (aka “real unemployment”) came in at +7.9%.
Retail Sales Better than Expected for January
Hopefully, this will be one of the final government shutdown-delayed economic reports: Retail Sales for January performed better than expected at -0.2%, from the -0.4% analysts had been expecting, though still lower than the unrevised 0.0% from the prior month. Ex-autos, this numbers turned flat as well, though subtracting autos and gas we see this figure climb to +0.3%, above the +0.2% projected.
What to Expect from the Stock Market Today
Pre-market futures are sinking like a stone at this hour, partly due to the weak BLS numbers, but also when we filter the rising oil prices — now pushing upwards of $90 per barrel (bbl); we were at $55/bbl only a few short weeks ago — and President Trump’s all-caps message this morning for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” The Dow is currently -1.37%, the S&P 500 -1.27%, the Nasdaq -1.56% and the small-cap Russell 2000 -2.29%.
Believe it or not, the Russell is still trading in the green year to date — though for how long? After a hopeful (short) period in late January, we now see major indexes -2-3%, with apparently more room to fall on the downside. Perhaps investors will move heroically once again to bounce back from tested lows, but at some point we may have to look for some genuine goods news to expect markets to rise from here.
After the opening bell, Business Inventories for December are expected to be in-line with the previous month at +0.1%, while Consumer Credit for January is anticipated to have dwindled to +$11 billion from +$24 billion later this afternoon. But ultimately it will take something bigger, with bigger upward moves, to re-set today’s market in more favorable terms.
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