Kyunghyang Shinmun reported that the US Labor Department said on November 6 (US time) that October nonfarm payrolls rose by 165,000 from September. That far exceeded the 59,000 expected by economists surveyed by Dow Jones, and unemployment fell from 4.2% to 4.1%, below the 4.2% forecast. Job gains for August and September were revised up by a combined 84,000.

By sector, professional and business services added about 70,000 jobs, health care about 42,000 and manufacturing 19,000, while hotels, restaurants and bars lost 10,600. Hourly wages rose 3.1% from a year earlier, a pace Kyunghyang said is not enough to ease the price burden. The AP analyzed that low layoffs and low hiring leave those with jobs secure, though young people and the unemployed may keep struggling to find work.

Seoul reacted to AI worries more than to the data

Per Newspim and Betanews, the KOSPI closed on November 6 at 5,059.69, down 324.11 points (6.02%), with an intraday low of 4,911.28. A circuit breaker halted trading for 20 minutes after the open, and a sell-side sidecar followed on resumption. The KOSDAQ fell 5.03% to 644.27. Betanews said fears of tighter AI data-center regulation after the US midterms spread into a chip sell-off, compounded by a 5.52% drop in the Nasdaq overnight.

News1 reported that the won closed at 1,356.6 per dollar, down 14.5 won, after touching 1,362.2 intraday. Risk aversion from the plunge in US tech stocks and worries about slowing AI investment weighed on the won, while the strong jobs data was described as giving the dollar slight support. Betanews said foreign investors net sold about 2.8 trillion won of KOSPI shares, the sixth straight session of net selling since October 30.

Official response and what comes next

Betanews reported that from November 9, financial authorities will temporarily waive for three months the requirement that securities firms maintain collateral ratios on margin loans, to curb forced sales that push prices lower. News1 quoted an analyst expecting the unwinding of currency hedges and possible official intervention to limit won weakness, and exporters' dollar sales were also cited as a brake on further depreciation.

What the strong jobs figures signal for the Federal Reserve's rate path could not be confirmed in this reporting. Taiwan's UDN said in a headline that odds tied to a December rate move had risen, but details were not confirmed. With US consumer prices due on the 10th and the Bank of Korea's rate-setting meeting on the 26th, Betanews expects Seoul's markets to hinge on US AI policy, foreign fund flows and whether chip stocks recover.