CNBC’s Jim Cramer sees the Federal Reserve raising interest rates next month after Friday’s strong jobs number.
The Labor Department said Friday the economy added 261,000 jobs in October, a pickup from September, and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent.
“I’m going to just stick with what we need on this and say you’re going to get a rate hike on this,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street.” “You can do it. There’s less slack.”
“It’s all systems go,” Cramer added.
As widely expected, the Fed did not raise interest rates at its policy meeting this week, but there was little indication a December rate hike was off the table.
The CME FedWatch tool on Friday morning put the chances of a rate increase in December at about 96 percent.
The central bank has raised rates twice this year as part of a program for a normalization of monetary policy.
Cramer also said the jobs numbers are in sync with the stock market’s rally. “Growth without inflation is still the single-best thing you can have for stocks, and that’s what this number gave,” the “Mad Money” host said.
Stocks were mixed Friday morning as the major averages looked to extend a string of weekly wins, which has Wall Street hitting record after record this year.
Friday’s job report showed wage growth disappointing, with earnings off by 1 cent an hour.
“It’s certainly not based on average hourly earnings, which it’s really incredible how you can be this tight at 4.1 and people not getting 40 cents or 30 cents more,” Cramer said.
But, he added: “It’s growth without inflation which has been historically unbelievable for the stock market.”
Cramer: We're going to get a Fed interest rate hike after October's jobs number