Shutterstock
Stocks fall after strong job data signals likely continued Fed rate hikes – Amazon and Salesforce cut workforce – Coinbase pays $100 million settlement – Meta fined $414 million by EU – GM crowned top US automaker
Stocks slipped on Thursday after the latest economic data showed job growth, leading investors to anticipate continuing interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
The S&P 500 tumbled 0.7%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 250 points or 0.8%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite plopped 0.9%, Yahoo Finance reported.
The benchmark 10-year US Treasury moved up +0.054 for a yield of 3.763% as of 10:42 AM EST.
The number of job openings in November exceeded analysts’ expectations of 10 million for a total of 10.46 million, according to data from the Department of Labor. There are about 1.7 job openings for each job seeker in November, unchanged from October, CNN reported.
Job quitting also surged in November to 4.2 million and has now been above 4,000,000 for eighteen straight months showing that the great resignation is far from over.
Amazon announced it plans to lay off more than 18,000 workers, including those from Amazon stores and its human resources department, as the global economic outlook continues to worsen, CNN reported. The company said it will begin informing effective staff beginning on January 18.
Salesforce announced it will reduce its workforce by 10%, as well as execute select real estate exits and office space reductions, Yahoo Finance reported. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said, “[W]e hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that.”
Publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has agreed to a settlement to pay a $100 million fine due to its “significant failures in its compliance program” that violated New York state laws, NPR reported.
In the latest European privacy crackdown, regulators from the European Union (EU) imposed a fine of 390M euros ($414 million) on Facebook parent company Meta for privacy violations and banned the company from forcing users in the 27-nation bloc to agree to personalized ads based on their online activity, the Associated Press reported.
General Motors reclaimed its U.S. sales crown from Toyota Motor Co. GM revealed it sold 2.27 million vehicles in the U.S. in 2022, an increase of 2.5% over 2021. Toyota announced it sold 2.1 million vehicles in the U.S. last year, down 9.6% from 2021, CNBC reported.
