Dow climbs more than 800 points after May's better-than-expected jobs report

(Image credit: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)

published 5 June 2020

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed more than 800 points on Friday following a shock jobs report that showed the unemployment rate surprisingly decline.

The Dow rose 829 points to 27,110 following the release of the May jobs report from the Labor Department, which showed that the unemployment rate declined to 13.3 percent in May as the economy added 2.5 million jobs, CNBC reports. The S&P 500 also climbed 2.6 percent.

While the unemployment rate remains high, it wasn't expected to decline at all in May — economists forecasted a rise to almost 20 percent and predicted 8 million more jobs would be lost. The report came after all 50 states began to reopen their economies, and the Labor Department said that the "improvements in the labor market reflected a limited resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed in March and April" during the pandemic.

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As The Washington Post notes, the Dow closed above 27,000 for the first time in three months, and Wall Street is "close to putting investors back where they were in January," prior to the coronavirus pandemic taking a devastating toll on the U.S. economy. The Dow "was only down 5.0 percent year to date after dropping as much as 34.6 percent in 2020," CNBC reports, while according to The New York Times, the S&P 500 is "coming close to recouping all of its losses for 2020 so far."

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Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.

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