Some strong economic reports are helping push S&P 500 higher Friday while the Dow Jones Industrial dropped 48 points.

It is all minor moves across the board on the stock markets today as there was some good news to be found among the US job reports data. Wages grew by 4.5% from last year, which was higher than what economists were expecting. Wage growth was not the only promising news, though. The reports stated that 353,000 jobs were added in January, which is much higher than the anticipated 177,000-185,000 from various reporting firms and the Dow Jones’ own estimate.

The Nasdaq Composite gained a marginal 1.1% today as well following the jobs report.

Will Stocks Continue to Gain from Here?

The labor market looks healthy at the moment, with chief US economist for Santander, Stephen Stanley, calling it “still robust”. Hourly earnings averages are up, and the unemployment rate is down, and that could mean that rate cuts will come back on the table. The Fed recently announced that there would be no interest rate cuts for March, which helped the market this week as well. We could still see those cuts happen in November, though.

With the jobs report looking better than expected, inflation is expected to remain stable or to improve in the coming months. This could open the way for stock support with decent growth over time. Stocks are not particularly strong right now, but they are stable, which is almost as good. Investors are hoping to see continued economic growth from here.

Meta Platforms from Facebook is up 82 points today and Amazon has gained 11 points. The environment is right for a few stocks to do very well as they take advantage of the jobs report and the stabilizing economy.