Stocks Mostly Down Pre-Bell as Investors Parse September Jobs Report

07:21 AM EST, 11/21/2025 (MT Newswires) -- The benchmark US stock measures were mostly pointing lower before Friday's open as traders assess the labor market following the release of the delayed September jobs report.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% and the Nasdaq declined 0.4% before the bell, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.2%. The indexes closed Thursday in the red, with the Nasdaq falling to its lowest in more than two months.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday that total nonfarm payrolls in the US rose by 119,000 in September, more than the 51,000 increase expected in a survey compiled by Bloomberg. However, the unemployment rate edged up to 4.4%, the highest since October 2021, while Wall Street expected it to hold steady at 4.3%.

The report, which comes less than a month before the Federal Reserve's next monetary policy meeting, was delayed by nearly seven weeks due to the record-long federal government shutdown, which ended last week.

"We continue to think the Fed will ease in response to soft labor market conditions and a desire to get monetary policy in the vicinity of neutral," Morgan Stanley said in a report e-mailed to MT Newswires. "But the policy rate path remains highly data-dependent and, in our view, a mixed report means the committee will want to see more data before taking another step."

The probability that the Federal Open Market Committee will lower interest rates by 25 basis points next month was 44% on Friday, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Treasury yields were down in premarket action, with the two-year rate retreating 4 basis points to 3.52% and the 10-year rate off 3.9 basis points to 4.07%.

Fed Governor Michael Barr is scheduled to speak at 8:30 am ET. New York Fed President John Williams, Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan and Boston Fed President Susan Collins are also slated to speak Friday.

US President Donald Trump signed an order to remove his 40% tariffs on certain Brazilian food products, the White House said Thursday.

On the economic calendar, the purchasing managers' index report from S&P Global (SPGI) for November is out at 9:45 am, followed by the final University of Michigan consumer sentiment report for the same month at 10 am.

Preliminary results of the report earlier in November showed that consumer sentiment fell to the weakest level in more than three years amid concerns about the government shutdown's impact on the economy.

Shares of Intuit (INTU) advanced 3.1% pre-bell as the financial technology platform reported fiscal first-quarter results above market expectations. Ross Stores (ROST) rose 3.4% after the discount retailer announced an unexpected increase in its fiscal third-quarter earnings.

BJ's Wholesale Club (BJ) reports its latest financial results before the bell, among others.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil dropped 1.9% to $57.91 a barrel before the opening bell. The weekly Baker Hughes oil-and-gas rig count posts at 1 pm.

Gold slipped 0.7% to $4,034 per troy ounce, while bitcoin slumped 4.9% to $82,236.

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