U.S. Adds 165,000 October Jobs as Midterms Shift Wall Street Sectors

Resilient domestic hiring, sharp post-election sector rotations on Wall Street, and diverging consumer and export data in China defined the global economic outlook this week as investors weighed Federal Reserve interest-rate policy against shifting congressional priorities.

U.S. Employers Add 165,000 Jobs in October as Unemployment Dips to 4.1%

According to NBC Bay Area, U.S. employers added 165,000 jobs in October 2026—surpassing economists' forecast of 65,000—while the unemployment rate declined to 4.1% even as 421,000 workers entered the labor force. Labor Department revisions also added 84,000 jobs to August and September payrolls. Professional and business services led gains with 70,000 new jobs, healthcare companies hired nearly 42,000 workers, and factories added 19,000 jobs, offsetting a reduction of 10,600 positions across hotels, restaurants, and bars.

Average hourly wages rose 0.4% from September—the largest monthly increase since January—and stood 3.1% higher than in October 2025, trailing annual inflation as U.S. gasoline prices remained above $4 a gallon. Edward Jones senior global strategist Angelo Kourkafas called the release a "blowout jobs report," and CME FedWatch showed Wall Street pricing a 77% probability of a Federal Reserve interest-rate hike in December, up 10 points from Thursday. While third-quarter gross domestic product expanded at a 3.4% annual pace, employers have added an average of 86,000 jobs per month in 2026—up from 9,700 per month in 2025 (the slowest non-recession pace since 2002), though below the 166,000 monthly average of 2023 and 2024 and the 491,000 monthly pace of 2021-2022. Yale University's Budget Lab estimates the labor market's monthly break-even threshold has fallen from 166,000 in late 2023 to just over 5,000.

Midterm Election Results Spark Sector Rotation Across Wall Street

Following the Democratic sweep in Tuesday's midterm elections, KCBS Radio reported that equity investors rotated out of defense, oil, and data-center stocks into healthcare, housing, and tariff-sensitive consumer brands. Hospital operators rallied on expectations of restored Medicaid and Affordable Care Act funding, with Universal Health Services climbing 10.4%, HCA Healthcare rising 6.9%, and Tenet Healthcare gaining 6.2%. Homebuilders and retailers also advanced as D.R. Horton rose 4.9%, PulteGroup gained 4.4%, Home Depot added 2.9%, Costco Wholesale rose 3.4%, Dollar General gained 2.5%, and Procter & Gamble added 2.1%, alongside gains for alcohol producers Constellation Brands and Brown-Forman on hopes for tariff relief.

Conversely, defense contractors Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and General Dynamics dropped between 4% and 12% on expectations of a push to end the U.S.-Iran conflict that has constrained oil supplies since February, while energy producers Exxon Mobil and Phillips 66 also retreated despite holding year-to-date gains. Shares tied to data-center construction such as Nvidia and Lam Research experienced volatility over potential statehouse permitting slowdowns in Texas. After Elon Musk spent more than $445 million backing Republican congressional campaigns, SpaceX fell 5% and Tesla dropped 10.1%, while Trump Media & Technology lost 33% of its market value over three trading days—leaving President Donald Trump's stake below $600 million compared with nearly $5 billion in March 2025 as the firm awaits a pending merger with TAE Technologies.

China's Singles' Day Sales Top 1 Trillion Yuan Amid Cautious Domestic Spending

In Asia-Pacific retail data reported by KCBS Radio, retail analytics firm Syntun calculated that cumulative sales for China's Singles' Day (11-11) shopping festival reached just over 1 trillion yuan ($154 billion) as of October 31, matching the prior year's pace after full-festival sales hit almost 1.7 trillion yuan ($254 billion) in 2025. To stimulate orders, Alibaba integrated its Qwen AI assistant across Taobao and Tmall and promoted AI token plans, with livestreamer Li Jiaqi recording sales equivalent to 2 trillion tokens within 30 minutes.

Even as China's gross domestic product grew 4.6% annually in January-September and October exports surged 35% year-over-year toward a record above last year's $1.2 trillion trade surplus—including a 71% jump in passenger car exports—domestic retail sales rose 1.1% in January-September, domestic passenger car sales fell nearly 25%, home prices remained down roughly 20% or more from their 2021 peak, and youth unemployment stood near 18%. Analysts Max Zenglein of The Conference Board, Andy Rothman of Sinology, Shaun Rein of China Market Research Group, and Yaling Jiang of ApertureChina noted widespread discount fatigue across the 1.4-billion-person market, though WPIC Marketing + Technologies CEO Jacob Cooke pointed out that online sales of imported fish oil grew nearly 43% year-over-year through September while sleep, joint, and bone supplements rose between 28% and 37%.