Dow soars, adds 1,000 points by midday Friday – following 'joyous' jobs report

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is skyrocketing on Friday, adding 1,000 points before noon, following the Bureau of Labor Statistics' release of a jobs report that unexpectedly showed 2.5 million jobs had been added to the U.S. economy during May.

The S&P 500 is up 3.1%. U.S. markets have posted gains every day this week. Both the job and stock numbers indicate a strong demand for people to return to work in America following 11 weeks of pandemic-induced closures and lockdowns.

President Trump spoke to the press this morning about the apparently significant steps toward economic recovery that the unemployment number appears to show.  

"It's a stupendous number. It's joyous," he tweeted prior to the briefing.

In March, as the markets began to tumble, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin assumed the position that because the novel coronavirus itself was not an economic event, the market should be expected to return fairly swiftly following the sweep of the illness.

"Later in the year, obviously the economic activity will pick up as we confront this virus," he said.

The markets have seemingly not reacted to the state of civil unrest currently permeating some of the nation's cities, following the May 25 death of George Floyd.