Good morning. Yields are up and prices are down on government bonds across the developed world. US Treasuries yields crossed 4.7 per cent on Friday, alongside big increases in Germany, Japan, and the UK — which saw 30-year gilts hit a 27-year high last week. Policy uncertainty? Higher neutral rates taking hold? Fiscal vigilantism? Inflation fears? All of the above? Email us: robert.armstrong@ft.com and aiden.reiter@ft.com.

Jobs

Friday’s jobs report, Unhedged readers will know by now, was very strong. It is important to note, though, that while the report was indeed a blowout relative to expectations — 256,000 jobs added against an estimate of 160,000 — it did not represent a breakout in the level of or trend in employment. Instead, what we got was confirmation that the labour market remains firm, reflecting an unusually strong economy that is cooling very gently, if at all. 

Using three and six month averages to remove a bit of the noise, it looks like job growth may have edged up a bit in recent months, but the improvement does not look very different from the normal variability we’ve seen in the data in the past couple of years. Could we be seeing a re-acceleration? Maybe, maybe not.