Bitcoin saw a rebound on Thursday after the US Department of Labor reported an unexpected increase in initial jobless claims for the week ended May 30. Claims rose by 13,000 to a total of 225,000, surpassing market expectations of 215,000. This surprise uptick signaled some softening in the labor market and temporarily eased investor anxiety around risk assets.
The latest claims figure also reflected a revision of the prior week's data, which was adjusted upward to 212,000. Meanwhile, continuing claims for the week ended May 23 declined by 8,000, registering at 1.777 million. Additional labor metrics revealed that labor costs increased by 1.8% over the last quarter, falling short of the anticipated 2.5%, suggesting a slowdown in wage inflation pressures.
Following the release, Bitcoin gained more than 2% on the hourly chart, trading near $63,518. Despite this short-term recovery, the cryptocurrency remained down by nearly 5% over the previous 24 hours. The total market capitalization of Bitcoin hovered around $1.27 billion, while daily trading volume surged to about $64.91 billion. Earlier in the day, Bitcoin’s price had dipped to roughly $61,000 due to extensive sell-offs across the crypto market, which had wiped out over $200 billion in value since the week began.
This labor market data influenced crypto investors because softer job numbers could signal that the Federal Reserve might delay or reduce the pace of interest rate hikes. Lower interest rates generally increase the appeal of riskier assets like Bitcoin by improving liquidity conditions. However, amid geopolitical tensions and rising energy costs linked to ongoing global conflicts, some analysts still project potential aggressive rate increases from the Fed, which could challenge the cryptocurrency’s rally.