Friday, May 6. The U.S. posted the highest unemployment rate since October 2004, jumped by half a percentage point in May to 5.5%, on the biggest increase in seasonally adjusted unemployment in 33 years.

The Labor Department reported that Nonfarm payrolls fell by 49,000 last month marking the fifth consecutive decrease and in line with expectations of economists.

Unemployment rose by 861,000 in May to a total of 8.5 million, according to a separate survey of about 60,000 households. It was the biggest one-month increase in unemployment since January 1975.

After this shocking U.S. jobless rate release, crude prices soared to a record near $140 a barrel. The surge in crude futures came amid heightened concerns that Israel might attack Iran, one of the world’s largest oil producers; will oil hit $150 a barrel by the end of June?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell close to 400 points, to end 12,209.81, giving it a weekly loss of 3.5%.

Since employment is one of the main indicators used to judge whether the economy is growing or contracting, the figures are certainly not very encouraging. Could this uncertainty about the outlook for the ailing U.S. economy indicating the US is going into a recession?

Will there be enough positive data to renew the investors’ confidence entering the second week of June? Could Friday’s wild selloff in stocks set up a perfect opportunity for investors to go bargain hunting?

“It’s not that stock prices are capricious. It’s that the news is capricious” - Burton Malkiel

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