Jim Cramer says strong September jobs report is good for stocks
The stronger-than-expected September jobs report is good news for Main Street and Wall Street, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday. Job gains of 254,000 in the month — paired with solid hourly earnings gains — suggest the U.S. economy is in a solid spot despite lingering slowdown fears, Cramer said. That kind of backdrop should lend support to corporate earnings and by extension the stock market, he said. Indeed, all three major U.S. stock indexes traded modestly higher Friday after the jobs report. Investors are concluding “this is a good number for the stock market because we’re not having stagflation,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street,” referring to a situation in which economic growth is low and inflation is high. “As long as we don’t have a recession, stocks go higher,” he added. The September jobs report arrived about two weeks after the Federal Reserve began its easing cycle with a larger-than-usual half-percentage point reduction in its benchmark lending rate. In March 2022, the U.S. central bank began an aggressive hiking campaign that eventually brought interest rates to their highest levels in more than two decades in an effort to slow the U.S. economy and stamp out surging inflation. The rate of price increases has come down closer to the Fed’s targeted levels and the economy has cooled off — but not experienced a “hard landing” by falling into recession, as some feared would happen due to Fed rate hikes. The alternate phrase of a “soft landing” arose in recent years to describe a scenario in which inflation is tamed without an economic downturn. Cramer said Friday’s job report lends credence to a third outcome for the U.S. economy all together — that of no landing at all, with economic growth and the labor market remaining healthy. “We’re about to have [third-quarter] earnings,” Cramer said. “Maybe we’re not going to have a shortfall in earnings. We have good job growth… This is a no-landing number.”
