The Fed kicked off its rate-cutting campaign in September with a larger-than-usual cut of half a percentage point, as it turns more attention to keeping the job market solid instead of focusing on just driving inflation lower.

The two-year Treasury yield, which closely tracks expectations for the Fed’s actions, initially fell following the jobs report but then climbed to 4.20 per cent from 4.18 per cent late Thursday.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which also takes future economic growth and other factors into account, likewise rose after a knee-jerk drop. It climbed to 4.37 per cent, up from 4.29 per cent late Thursday.

Economists said Friday’s jobs report contained a lot of noise and perhaps not much signal. Besides two hurricanes that left destructive paths across the United States during the month, a strike by workers at Boeing also helped depress the numbers.

All those distortions make the numbers difficult to parse, “but it doesn’t change our view that the labor market should further decelerate in coming months,” said Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

The hope on Wall Street is that the economy will still avoid a recession, even with that expected slowdown in the job market, thanks in part to coming cuts to interest rates by the Fed. The overall economy has so far remained more resilient than feared.

Loading

A separate report on Friday said US manufacturing contracted by more last month than economists expected. It’s been one of the areas of the economy hurt most by the Fed’s keeping interest rates at a two-decade high until September.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe after finishing lower across much of Asia outside of Hong Kong.

The price of oil, meanwhile, rose again to further trim its loss for the week. A barrel of benchmark US crude rose 0.4 per cent. Brent crude, the international standard, also climbed 0.4 per cent.