NEW YORK (Reuters] – The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a low level in November. It is probable that millions of Americans who are unemployed stayed home despite increased wages, expiring generous jobless benefit and school reopening.

According to the Labor Department, nonfarm payrolls grew by 210,000 last month. Reuters polled economists and predicted that payrolls would increase by 550,000. According to Reuters, October data showed employment increasing by 546,000 instead of 531,000. After a 4.6% October reading, the November unemployment rate was 4.2%. The wages rose further.

MARKET REACTION:

STOCKS: S&P e-mini futures extended slight gains and were up 0.22%, pointing to a steady open on Wall Street

BONDS – The benchmark 10-year bond yield rose to 1.5546%. The yield of the two-year Treasury rose to 0.6369%

FOREX: The price was up 0.1%

COMMENTS:

PETER CARDILLO, CHIEF MARKET ECONOMIST, SPARTAN CAPITAL SECURITIES, NEW YORK

“It’s a market that’s healing but healing at an uneven level. The reason we have the drop in unemployment is people dropping out the workforce and that’s not a good sign. This is important because if the Fed drops its full employment standard, which is likely due to concerns about wage inflation, it will mean that although this disappointing report isn’t likely to change its accelerated tapering pace, and may begin increasing rates in the second half.

“The bottom line is it’s a disappointment.”

JIM VOGEL INTEREST RATES STRATEGIST FHNFINANCIAL MEMPHIS, TENSEE

“Right now, people are sorting through the really good numbers in the household survey, and for now they are reducing their emphasis on the big payroll miss. It’s not completely unusual for the official business survey to be a bit wonky and that’s why we’ve seen so many upward revisions and that’s part of the feel. We are trading not only the payroll number this morning, but we are still trading Powell’s confident expression that tapering is a good idea from Tuesday, and we’re working on the premise that they’ve come to some pretty firm conclusions regardless of fourth quarter data.”

JJ KINAHAN, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, TD AMERITRADE, CHICAGO

“So we’re going to have the unemployment rate fall by 0.4% but miss on the top line number – something doesn’t add up. As I was looking through the sectors, the sectors that don’t truly make sense to me are leisure and hospitality up so small and retail being down, which is very odd for this time of year. So I’m wondering if we are going to see some revisions going forward on those two because those just don’t add up with everything else I am seeing. Because you did get some strong numbers out of warehousing again, which is great, professional services, construction, manufacturing – all the areas you want to see growth we are seeing it, which is fantastic.”

“The futures seemed to like it, that top-line number, maybe people are thinking that although Powell talked this week about the taper maybe this slows the pace or slows them starting it.”

“Pretty significant revisions in September – 67,000 more, October 15,000 more. Something is very odd about this report.”

“The rally here may be top line related but when you add that top line with the employment rate it is hard to square the circle so we’ll see if the buying momentum can last off of that. You also have the volatile week, so this might be some momentum from yesterday. And two weeks from today is quadruple witching, we also have the end of the year coming up, so you do have people already starting to adjust their portfolios in a bigger way.”

(Compliled by the global Finance & Markets Breaking News team)