The first full trading week of September was perhaps the most consequential in a while as a slew of data indicated the economy may be slowing. On Thursday, the ADP nonfarm payroll report came in and revealed that the economy added 54,000 jobs this month compared to an expected 73,000 and 106,000 last month.
On Friday, the BLS version of the nonfarm payroll report revealed that the economy created 22,000 jobs in August compared to an expected 75,000 and 79,000 last month. The unemployment rate also ticked slightly higher to 4.3 percent. It’s worth noting that the June jobs figure was revised downward to a net loss of 22,000.
The one thing that is clear is that market participants expect the Fed to cut interest rates by at least 25 basis points on September 17. In fact, traders have priced in a 12 percent chance that the Fed cuts by 50 basis points. Furthermore, expectations have risen that the Fed will cut more than once in 2025 and multiple times in 2026. The main rate is currently at a range of 4.25 percent and 4.5 percent.
There were a few other notable releases this week including the JOLTS report and the ISM Services and ISM Manufacturing PMIs. The JOLTS report revealed that there were 7.18 million job openings available in the United States, which could be an indication of a slowdown in hiring. The ISM Services PMI came in at 52 compared to an expected 50.9 while the ISM Manufacturing PMI came in at 48.7 compared to an expected 49.
For the second straight week, the S&P 500 stayed in a tight range, losing 0.1 percent to close at 6,481. This represented a loss of just over six points over the last five trading days. The market made its weekly low 6,367 on Tuesday morning before reversing and making its weekly high of 6,525 early Friday morning.
The Dow also spent another week in a tight trading range finishing down 0.49 percent to close at 45,400. This represented a loss of 224 points over the past week. On Wednesday afternoon, the market made a weekly low of 45,015 while it would peak at 45,728 on Friday morning.
Unlike the other two major indexes, the Nasdaq finished the week up 0.31 percent to close at 23,652. This was a gain of 73 points for a market that has outperformed the S&P and Dow throughout 2025. Over the past week, the index made a 23,002 on Tuesday morning and a high of 23,836 on Friday morning.
In international news, Australia announced Tuesday night that its GDP rose .6 percent over the past quarter. On Thursday morning, Switzerland announced that the country’s inflation rate dropped by .1 percent on a monthly basis. Finally, Canada announced Friday morning that its economy lost 65,000 jobs last month and that the country’s unemployment rate jumped to 7.1 percent.
On Wednesday, the Price Producers Index (PPI) is released while Thursday sees the release of inflation data for August. It’s expected that inflation rose .3 percent over the past month and will increase to 2.9 percent on an annualized basis.