Awaiting January U.S. Jobs Data and Puzzling Over Other Weird News – Currency Thoughts
Awaiting January U.S. Jobs Data and Puzzling Over Other Weird News
February 11, 2026
The Labor Department’s monthly employment situation report, which will in addition include a variety of revisions to past data, is due within the hour. Analysts are anticipating an unchanged 4.4% jobless rate, marginally softer wage growth of some 3.6% year-on-year and a rise of less than 75k jobs.
The U.S. FAA has grounded all air flights into and out of El Paso, America’s 22nd largest city with a population of about 680k “for special security reasons.” No specific details on what that exactly means were made available, but El Paso lies on the U.S./Mexican border. The suspension is for ten days and affects the roughly 1000 daily flights that customarily occur at that airport.
Oil prices are up 2.2% today. While U.S./Iran talks have been described as productive, a rumor is circulating that U.S. forces will attempt to block tankers from serving Iran.
The dollar performance was not good in 2025 and continues to soften in 2026, yet Commerce Secretary Lutnick is quoted as complaining that other countries are trying to appreciate the U.S. currency in order to gain a more competitive price advantage in trade.
In overnight market action, the dollar fell by 0.5% against the Australian dollar, 0.3% relative to the yen, won and sterling but just 0.1% against the euro and Swiss franc. The 10-year Swiss sovereign debt yield jumped five basis points. In contrast, the 10-year U.S. Treasury and British gilt yields are a basis point lower, and comparable French, German, Italian and Spanish yields have held steady. Prices for silver (+6.4%) and gold (+1.7%) are being strongly bid again, while Bitcoin has fallen by a further 2.2%. Stock markets in Taiwan (+1.6%), South Korea (+1.0%), Australia (1.7%) and Indonesia (+2.0%) rose strongly. Japan was closed for National Foundation Day. With British Prime Minister’s political situation looking in slightly less peril, the FTSE has rebounded almost 1%. Other European share prices are marginally lower, while U.S. stock future shortly before the jobs report were marginally up.
Chinese consumer price inflation had risen to a 34-month high of 0.8% at end-2025 but fell back more than anticipated to a mere 0.2% last month. Core CPI in January slowed 0.4 percentage points to a 6-month low of 0.8%. Producer price inflation in China, which has been in sub-zero territory since October 2022, printed at an 18-month high of -1.4% in January.
Latvian CPI inflation slowed 0.6 percentage points to a 14-month low of 2.9% last month, and Portuguese consumer price inflation of 1.9% represents a 10-month low.
In central banking news, Deputy Governor Hauser of the Reserve Bank of Australia warned that inflation there remains too high and suggested that more monetary tightening beyond the 25-basis point interest rate hike earlier this month may become necessary.
The National Bank of Georgia’s policy interest rate was left unchanged at 8.0%, its level since a 25-basis point cut in May 2024. The rate has peaked previously at 11.0%, a level maintained from March 2022 until May 2023.
Zambia’s central bank interest rate was cut by 75 basis points to 13.5%, its lowest level since November 2024. Today’s cut was in follow-up to an initial 25-bp reduction in November. The rate previously had been at a peak of 14.5% since February 2025. Zambian consumer price inflation has decelerated from 16.8% in February 2025 to a 27-month low of 9.4% last month, which is still a bit above the 6-8% target range.
The U.S. labor market had something for everybody. The good news included a 130k increase of non-farm payroll jobs in January, almost double street expectations and set against combined downward revisions to the prior two months of only 15k. Also the unemployment rate unexpectedly edged 0.1 percentage point lower to a 5-month trough of 4.3% last month, and the combined U6 level of un- and underemployment dropped to 8.0% from 8.4%. Labor market participation rose to a 2-month high of 62.5%. The bad news emerges when one examines the benchmark revisions to the 2025 data. The level of jobs in December 2025 was 1.03 million less than believed before, resulting in a December 2025-over-December 2024 increase of 181k or just 15k on average per month. It gets worse if one compares the last two years of President Trump’s stewardship (i.e. January 2020 to January 2021 plus January 2025 to January 2026). Over that combined period, equivalent to half a four-year presidential term, employment tanked by 8.8 million workers or 5.4%. By contrast, the continuous four years of Joe Biden’s presidency saw employment rise 15.4 million workers or 10.8%.
Between December 2024 and December 2025, industrial production grew 3.2% in Italy, the most in 43 months, and expanded by 2.4% in Mexico, most in 17 months.
Brazilian producer prices were 4.5% lower than a year earlier in December, their most deflationary reading in 21 months.
U.S. share prices opened higher at the opening bell of trading today, as investors focused on the much greater-than-predicted jobs growth clocked in January. Healthcare workers accounted for about five-eighths of that overall 130k increase.
Copyright 2026, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved.
Tags: Central Bank of Zambia, Chinese CPI and PPI, National Bank of Georgia, U.S. jobs data
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