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The US Job Market

Market Update

09.02.2026

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What happened last week?

Global 

  • Bitcoin continued its meltdown, falling by roughly 50% from its October high. 

US 

  • Anthropic rattled software firms around the world with its latest AI model. 
  • Amazon and Alphabet announced solid earnings and some heavy AI investment plans. 

Europe 

  • The European Central Bank and Bank of England both left interest rates unchanged. 

Why It Matters

Bitcoin slid below $65,000 in one of its worst weeks in some time – leaving it at roughly half the value it notched back in October. The safety of the so-called digital gold has come under serious question lately, as investors worry that quantum computers could crack crypto’s security keys. Other tokens were taking it on the chin, too: ether was down about a third from the start of the year. 

AI’s promise to remake everything felt a lot more real last week – as Anthropic’s latest model threatened to upend the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry’s business models right and left. Folks started calling it the “SaaSpocalypse”. If AI can handle your usual office number-crunching and analytics tasks on its own, today’s subscription-reliant firms (the Adobes and Figmas of the world) may soon start to look a lot less essential. 

Alphabet and Amazon both beat expectations last quarter, but the shareholder celebrations didn’t last long. The “magnificent” duo also announced plans to ramp up spending this year, with Alphabet looking to lay out $180 billion and Amazon $200 billion – most of that on AI infrastructure. The sheer heft of those price tags caught investors off guard and pushed both stocks a bit lower, on worries that the returns won’t ever match that size. 

The European Central Bank unanimously opted to hold its key interest rate steady for a fifth straight time. The Bank of England did the same, but in a much closer, 5-4 vote. So traders swiftly moved to up their bets for a UK rate cut at the next go-round. 

 

The Focus This Week: The US Job Market

The most important data on the calendar this week lands on Wednesday, when the US Labour Department releases its long-awaited January jobs report. It was supposed to arrive last week, but a partial government shutdown pushed it back, only adding to the sense that markets are flying half-blind right now. 

Economists expect the US economy to have added about 68,000 jobs, which would mark the strongest monthly gain since September. They see the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.4%. But after a run of layoff announcements at big firms and some worrying employment indicators, investors have their doubts. 

Last week’s job openings and labour turnover survey (JOLTS) report was the clearest example. Postings fell sharply in December, as demand for new workers faded. The situation doesn’t look good: four years ago, there were more than two jobs available for every seeker. Now, there’s less than one. 

The backdrop is getting more uncomfortable. Job cuts have just crept higher, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, marking their worst January since 2009 – the height of the global financial crisis. 

This is why the big labour report matters so much. The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady in January, rather than cutting them for a fourth straight time, encouraged by signs that the job market might be stabilising after a rough patch – and hoping to see inflation cool just a bit more. A full view on both will be available this week: the consumer price index is released on Friday. 

The Week Ahead

  • Monday: Nothing major. Watch some Olympic skiing. 
  • Tuesday: US small business optimism index. Earnings: Coca-Cola, Spotify, Cloudflare, Ford. 
  • Wednesday: US employment (January). Earnings: Kraft Heinz, McDonald’s, Shopify, Cisco. 
  • Thursday: UK economic growth (December), UK industrial production (December), eurozone industrial production (December). Earnings: Airbnb, Arista Networks, Palo Alto, Rivian, Vertex. 
  • Friday: Eurozone economic growth (December), US inflation (January). Earnings: Moderna. 

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