Stocks Surge 0.8% as Job Growth Hits Record High

Stocks climbed higher on Thursday after news that employers ramped up hiring in June, setting another all-time record to start the holiday weekend. The S&P 500 rose 0.8%, setting an all-time high for the fourth time in five days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 344 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite gained 1%.

The market’s gains were widespread, with companies whose profits can get the biggest boosts when workers are feeling confident leading the way. Expedia climbed 3.2%, and Norwegian Cruise Line steamed 2.9% higher. Bank stocks were also strong, with Citigroup up 2.3%, and JPMorgan Chase up 1.9%.

The reaction was bigger in the bond market following the report from the U.S. government, which said employers added 147,000 more jobs to their payrolls last month than they cut. A separate report indicated that fewer workers applied for jobless aid last week than expected, suggesting that layoffs eased. The unexpected acceleration in hiring signals the U.S. job market is holding up despite worries about how President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the $4.5 trillion budget bill he championed would affect inflation.

“There is nothing to complain about here,” according to Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. “You cannot find any evidence of a nascent recession in these figures.” Yields jumped in the bond market as investors bet the better-than-expected data could keep the Federal Reserve on hold when it comes to interest rates, instead of cutting them like Trump has loudly been calling for.

Traders in the futures market now see less than a 5% chance that the Fed could cut its main interest rate at its next meeting later this month. That’s down sharply from the nearly 24% chance they saw just a day earlier. The Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, has been insisting that he wants to wait and see how Trump’s tariffs affect the economy and inflation before making its next move. While lower rates give a boost to the economy by making it easier to borrow money, they can also give inflation more fuel. And that could be dangerous if Trump’s tariffs are about to send inflation higher.

Many of Trump’s stiff proposed taxes on imports are currently on pause, but they’re scheduled to kick in next week unless Trump reaches deals with other countries to lower them. Many U.S. companies in the services industries are still saying they’re concerned about the impacts of tariffs, even if they returned to growth last month following May’s contraction. “Increased cost from tariffs and the potential for tariffs is impacting cost increases,” one company in the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting industry said in the survey.

On Wall Street, Datadog rallied 14.9% after learning that its stock will join the widely followed S&P 500 index before trading begins on Wednesday. Many managers of funds either directly mimic or at least compare themselves against the S&P 500, which drives investment into any stock that joins the index. Datadog will replace Juniper Networks, which combined with Hewlett Packard Enterprise in a merger.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 51.93 points to 6,279.35. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 344.11 to 44,828.53, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 207.97 to 20,601.10. In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.