Around 2:55 p.m. GMT, the Dow Jones dropped 0.83%, the Nasdaq index fell by 1.53% and the broader S&P 500 index yielded 1.13%.

The US economy created 263,000 net jobs in November, well above the 200,000 expected by economists.

Far from rejoicing in still very vigorous activity in the United States despite signs of a slowdown, Wall Street took a step back and pushed the indices into the red.

"We are in a counter-intuitive context", explains Art Hogan, of B. Riley Wealth Management, namely that "if you want the Fed (American central bank) to slow down (its rate hikes), you need a minimal bad news."

This publication caused bond yields to jump.

The yield on 10-year US government bonds, which fell a few minutes earlier to its lowest level in nearly two and a half months (3.48%), soared to 3.63%.

For Peter Boockvar, of Bleakley Financial Group, "the access of panic of the markets, whether it is bonds or equities, comes from the surprise increase" in the average salary, which reached 0.6% over one month, or the double what was anticipated.

“Despite the Fed's determination to curb inflation, it is still workers who have the upper hand (in the job market) when it comes to wages,” commented Quincy Krosby of LPL Financial.

Operators immediately recalibrated their expectations in terms of trajectories and now see as a central scenario two successive increases of half a point each in the main key rate at the next Fed meetings, in mid-December and at the beginning of February.

They would raise the rate to 5%, a first for more than 16 years.

For Art Hogan, the market may have overreacted to the jobs report, because "if the goal of the Federal Reserve is to achieve a soft landing in the economy, that's exactly the kind of data you want to see, with inflation calming down and a job market that is not stalling".

"This report brings the markets back to earth, which were excited at the idea of ​​a + pivot + from the Fed," said Cliff Hodge of Cornerstone Wealth.

Logically, the tech sector was particularly hard hit, as it was very dependent on credit conditions to finance its growth.

Alphabet (-1.27%), Meta (-0.46%), but also the manufacturer of graphics cards and semiconductors Nvidia (-3.30%), were sanctioned.

Despite the fanfare delivery on Thursday of its first electric truck to the site of one of the manufacturer's factories in Sparks (Nevada), Tesla was also struggling (-0.72% to 193.30 dollars) .

Its competitor Nikola, who had been the first, at the end of 2021, to deliver electric trucks, was doing better (+ 2.31% to 2.66 dollars).

But the rag went far beyond the tech and almost all the values ​​of the Dow Jones fell.

Coca-Cola (+0.07%) and the petrochemical group Dow (+0.13%), considered as defensive stocks, that is to say theoretically less sensitive to the economic situation, were among the few companies to float.

© 2022 AFP