The Department of Labor’s monthly labor-market updates have been driving outsize swings in U.S. stocks since the start of 2023, a sign that one of the most closely watched economic-data reports has regained some of the relevance it ceded to inflation data last year.
Since the start of 2023, the S&P 500 SPX has moved on average 1.7% in either direction in response to the NFP data, which was long seen as the marquee economic data series in the U.S., according to several economists and market strategists.
However,…
