December’s jobs report was a tale of two numbers.

Job creation in December came in weaker than expected, with nonfarm payrolls rising by 50,000, well below the 73,000 forecast. Yet the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%, beating expectations of 4.5%.

Hiring was concentrated in a handful of service industries: restaurants and bars accounted for the largest gains last month, adding 27,000 jobs, followed by healthcare and social assistance. By contrast, retail employment fell by 25,000, and government payrolls were essentially flat.

Healthy headlines, hollow hiring

While the unemployment rate is falling month by month, 2025 was far from a strong year for the labor market.

The US added just 584,000 jobs in all of 2025, the weakest year for job growth outside a recession since 2003, with nearly 85% of those gains occurring by April, according to Navy Federal Chief Economist Heather Long—indicating that hiring dwindled thanks to tariff fears following Liberation Day. Notably, healthcare (405,000 jobs added) and social assistance (308,000 jobs) alone more than accounted for total job creation last year, quietly offsetting job losses across much of the broader economy.

Blue-collar workers have borne the brunt of the slowdown. Last year, the US shed 65,000 industrial jobs, a sharp contrast to the 250,000 added in 2024. Manufacturing has led the decline, with its share of total employment falling to below 8%, a record low, as cyclical cooling and longer-term shifts weigh on jobs across goods-producing and transportation sectors.

Adding to the confusion, President Trump appeared to reference unreleased labor data in a Truth Social post on Thursday night, claiming private-sector payrolls rose 654,000 in 2025. That suggests government job losses offset a meaningful portion of private-sector job growth, highlighting a growing divide between private and public sector hiring. For example: of the 50,000 new jobs added in December, only 2,000 came from the public sector.

What it means for markets

The labor market isn’t breaking—it’s stuck. The gap between hires and separations has narrowed to near zero, and with fewer workers switching jobs, wage growth slows, bargaining power weakens, and the churn that typically fuels broader economic momentum fades.

Markets are already adjusting. Traders largely pared back bets on an imminent interest-rate cut, as the lower-than-expected unemployment rate reduced pressure on the Federal Reserve to act quickly. For now, policymakers appear content to watch a cooling, but stable, labor market rather than rush to stimulate one that hasn’t yet cracked.—SY

🟢 What’s up

• President Trump ordered the purchase of $200 billion in mortgage bonds aimed at pushing down mortgage rates. Rocket Companies rose 9.7%, UWM Holdings climbed 13.47%, Better Home & Finance surged 6.49%, and Opendoor Technologies jumped 13.14% on the news.
• Intel rose 10.8% after Trump publicly praised CEO Lip-Bu Tan following their meeting.
• Chevron advanced 1.8% on reports it could add $700 million in annual cash flow from higher Venezuela output.
• Steel producer Cleveland-Cliffs jumped 4.08% after a Morgan Stanley upgrade tied to a deal with Korean steelmaker POSCO.
• Southwest Airlines surged 3.73% following a rare double-upgrade from JPMorgan, citing expectations for strong 2026 earnings.
• Lam Research climbed 8.66% after Goldman Sachs raised its price target amid broad strength in chip equipment stocks. ASML rose 6.66% and Applied Materials climbed 6.94% as well.
• CG Oncology soared 29.26% after the cancer drugmaker pulled the publication of data from the Phase 3 trial of its bladder cancer treatment up to the first half of this year.

What’s down

• Rio Tinto fell 5.04% after reports it’s in early merger talks with Glencore to form the world's biggest mining company.
• General Motors retreated 2.65% after flagging more than $7 billion in Q4 charges, driven by EV cutbacks and a $1.1 billion writedown tied to its China joint venture.
• Marketing company WD-40 declined 6.63%, sliding to a 52-week low after missing expectations in its first-quarter earnings report.

AI data centers are energy hogs, so Meta Platforms has turned to nuclear fuel to feed the beast.

The company formerly known as Facebook inked agreements with nuclear power providers Vistra and Oklo, as well as Bill Gates-founded startup TerraPower, which will collectively power Meta’s Prometheus supercluster computing system in Ohio. This fusion of artificial intelligence and atomic energy sent nuclear stocks to explosive highs: Shares of Vistra jumped 10.53%, while Sam Altman-backed Oklo popped 7.9%.

Meta’s massive data center should come online later this year, and by 2035, today’s nuclear deals are projected to infuse Prometheus with another 6.6 gigawatts of power. And just in case that’s not enough to keep Prometheus firing on all cylinders, Meta already signed another deal last year with Illinois-based power plant Constellation to provide another 1.1 gigawatts of nuclear energy for 20 years.

Meta isn’t the only Big Tech firm beefing up its atomic energy supply in the name of AI. Google hooked up its data centers with a new fleet of nuclear reactors by Kairos Power, Amazon teamed up with Energy Northwest and Dominion Energy to build a cluster of fission-powered small modular reactors, and Microsoft is looking to revive Three Mile Island.

AI’s growth shows no signs of slowing down, and it looks like the nuclear sector will continue to ride its coattails and rake in the dough as long as AI fever lasts.—JD

As prediction market traders collect $400,000 windfalls on the US ousting Venezuela’s president, concerns about insider trading, legality, and ethics continue to swirl around the booming business of real events betting.

Yet despite the eye-popping profits making headlines, a popular new prediction market strategy calls for a more measured approach: Instead of making bold bets on unlikely outcomes to win a huge payday, users are generating smaller, but still substantial, returns by playing it safe.

“Bonding,” as some traders have dubbed it, is not what caffeine-addled Polymarket users are doing with other real human beings—it’s the idea that by going long on a contract that is already likely to happen, you can accrue income over time, sort of like a traditional fixed-income investment.

Here’s an example: Andrew Courtney, a hobby trader on Kalshi who also runs a site called Kalshinomics, placed a bet on President Trump being inaugurated on November 18—after Trump had already won the election. The return was 2 cents on an investment of 98 cents over 63 days, a roughly 12.4% annualized return, he noted in a recent Substack post.

If you’re a fixed-income aficionado aghast at the perversion of traditional investment vehicles, you might be muttering to yourself, “Jesus Christ.” Well, traders are betting on him, too: Polymarket users wagered $3.3 million on Jesus Christ’s return in 2025. If you bet “no” when bets surged around Easter, your annualized return was 5.5%—higher than the return of US Treasury bills.

Predicting chaos

Bonding is an imprecise science, and even expert traders aren’t always doing it right, warned Courtney.

“One way you can lose bonding is you’re buying for 98 cents on the dollar, but the event is only 95% actually going to happen,” Courtney told Brew Markets. “Make sure you're not just selling something that is unlikely to happen. You need to have a reason that you think the odds are 99% versus 95%.”

To be clear: While profits on a single, well-placed bonding bet look compelling, nobody really thinks this is a reliable strategy to replace fixed income in your portfolio.

But if we have learned anything in 2025, it’s that the wild world of event gambling is just getting wilder.

Today, for example, we saw the emergence of a market that lets you bet on other prediction market odds. Sometimes, the punchlines write themselves.—LB

• OpenAI and SoftBank announced a $1 billion investment in SB Energy as part of their massive AI infrastructure buildout.
• Luxurious downfall: Saks Global is planning to file for bankruptcy as soon as this weekend.
• The European Union and four South American nations are teaming up to create a free trade zone that covers 700 million people.
• Johnson & Johnson and the White House made a deal to lower drug prices.
• Good vibes are in for 2026: US consumer sentiment rose to a four-month high as concerns about tariffs dissapated—for now.
• Here’s why IMAX had a blockbuster year compared to its theater stock peers.

The highlight of next week will be the December CPI report on Tuesday, the final CPI reading before the next Federal Reserve decision on January 28. Speaking of the Fed, we’ll hear from a wave of central bankers throughout the week, so keep your ears to the ground for signals about what they plan to do now that the labor market doesn’t seem to be as stressed as it once was.

In addition, keep an eye on PPI and November retail sales Wednesday, as well as the Fed’s Beige Book. There’s also initial jobless claims on Thursday, followed by a report on industrial production and capacity utilization for December on Friday.

As for earnings, the new season kicks off with big banks reporting their latest numbers beginning on Tuesday.

Monday: Nothing of note, good chance to brace yourself for the deluge ahead

Tuesday: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, and Delta Air Lines

Wednesday: Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo

Thursday: TSMC, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley

Friday: PNC, Regions Financial Services, State Street, and M&T Bank