Gold Surges Past $4,400 on Weaker-Than-Expected Jobs Report

The price of gold has surged to $4,422.30 per ounce after adding 0.47 percent on Monday alone, marking its strongest weekly showing since mid-January with a 6.97 percent gain over the past seven sessions.

This rally was catalyzed by Friday's US employment report for July, which delivered a genuine shock: nonfarm payrolls contracted by 23,000 positions, against analyst forecasts calling for an 80,000 gain.

The damage extended beyond the headline figure, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised June's reading down from 57,000 to a mere 20,000, pulling the trailing twelve-month average of job creation to roughly 34,000 per month, a number that suggests the labor market's softness is a trend, not a one-off blemish.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.1 percent, while wage growth cooled to 3.2 percent, its slowest pace since May 2021. The data upended expectations for Federal Reserve policy, with Fed funds futures now assigning just a 44 percent probability of a rate hike at the September 16 meeting.