S&P 500 futures were slightly lower Thursday night as investors looked ahead to the November jobs report.
Futures tied to the benchmark stock index dipped 0.15%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were lower by 0.15% and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.25%.
Shares of tech companies were on the move in after-hours trading following quarterly results. Asana, Zscaler and Marvell all slipped.
In regular trading, the Dow closed lower by nearly 195 points, while the S&P 500 inched down 0.09%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 0.13%.
Those moves followed a mixed batch of economic data, including a core personal consumption expenditures report that was slightly better than expected on a monthly basis and a bigger-than-expected decline in the ISM Manufacturing Index. The so-called PCE deflator is one of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauges.
“Taken together, these two pieces of data may be suggestive of a soft landing for the US economy as long as growth does not slip much further,” Goldman Sachs’ Chris Hussey said in a note Thursday.
Investors are focused on the Labor Department’s report on non-farm payrolls, the unemployment rate and hourly wages, due at 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday. Economists expect the economy to have added 200,000 jobs in November, according to Dow Jones. That would be a decrease from the 261,000 it added in October.
Friday’s is the final monthly employment report before the Federal Reserve’s two-day meeting on Dec. 13 and 14, in which the central bank is expected to raise its fed funds target rate by a half percentage point.
