Portland Mortgage Market Update — January 9, 2026

I'm Back! I hope you had a great Holiday and Happy New Year. Here is this week's market update.

It was jobs week this week! JOLTS and ADP and BLS all dropped and for the most part painted a picture of a sputtering labor market. November and December are always kind of tricky months for jobs reports as stores and restaurants tend to staff up for the holidays. But the ADP report dropped on Wednesday showing there were only 41K jobs created in December (vs the expected 50K). The same day we got the JOLTS report for November saying the job openings in November totaled 7.15M (vs the 7.6M expected). The stage was set for today's BLS report and even with a shaky track of over inflating the market it came in at 50K, well below the estimate of 73K. It also has unemployment at 4.4% which is a bit better than the estimate 4.5% and discouraged/underemployed workers at 8.4%.

Wow, that's a lot of numbers. What's it all mean? In short, businesses are getting more afraid to hire and workers are becoming less likely to leave jobs they don't like. The Fed recently has been pointing to the relatively low unemployment numbers and strong production numbers as signs of a healthy economy, but many are thinking the improved production is either a result of AI or existing workers taking on additional roles to compensate for a shrinking labor force. Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union says this is creates "a great scenario for Wall Street, but an uneasy feeling on Main Street" and that "it's fair to say that 2025 was a hiring recession in the United States". The bond market took the BLS report as a mixed bag however and initially sputtered on its release.

"Initially sputtered?" Yes, the market opened this morning on an absolute tear after President Trump announced yesterday that the is instructing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 BILLION in Mortgage Bonds to push rates lower. After a brief pause in the rally to digest the BLS report, it picked right back up again and as of the time of the this writing we are up about 30 basis points. That means the rate you got yesterday for a cost of one discount point now costs about .7-.75 discount points. That being said, Trump also announced on Wednesday that he wants to almost double the US Defense spending in 2027. How will they do that? Likely by issuing more treasuries. To make those treasuries palatable, they will have to increase yields and higher yields=higher rates. So there is some push/pull going on right now but the market is usually reactionary rather than level-headed, and for now they are focusing on the good news that Trump is mandating that Quantitative Easing is back.