Mortgage rates just hit their lowest daily level in a year.
Following a Friday jobs report that showed a labor market in the red zone, Mortgage News Daily reported that the average for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage dropped to 6.29% Friday. The day before it was at 6.45%.
The outlet said this is the same level as what the market saw in the fall of last year. Mortgage rates haven’t been below 6% since September 2022, according to Freddie Mac data .
MND’s COO Matt Graham said in a post on X that “many lenders are priced better than 10/3/24 at rates of 6.125%, and many lenders will be quoting in the high 5’s today.”
Graham wrote in MND’s article that “weaker jobs numbers prompt investors to buy bonds,” adding that when “investors buy bonds, the price of those bonds goes up” and when “bond prices go up, rates go down.”
Friday’s latest jobs report showed an already weak market cooling down even more. For the month of August, nonfarm payrolls rose by just 22,000, the weakest monthly gain since April — and significantly short of economists’ expectations of roughly 75,000 new jobs.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%, a near four-year high, and wages rose 0.3% on the month (3.7% year over year), the slowest annual wage growth since July 2024.
Within minutes of the jobs report’s release, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq surged to record highs as investors saw renewed justification for a September rate cut. At the same time, Treasury yields dropped sharply — the two-year fell toward 3.5 to 3.6%, the lowest in years — and the dollar weakened against other currencies.
Major markets — including the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq — were down after the market closed on Friday.
— Shannon Carroll contributed to this article.