5 things to know before the market opens Friday

Happy Friday. There’s a warning for anyone rooting for France in this year’s FIFA World Cup: Artificial intelligence isn’t in your corner.

Stock futures are higher this morning following a down day for all three major averages.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

Shares of several consumer-focused companies cratered yesterday as their earnings reports — and comments about the health of the consumer — spooked Wall Street. Those losses helped drag the S&P 500 off its record highs in Thursday’s session.

Here’s what to know:

April’s jobs report is due out at 8:30 a.m. ET today. Economists polled by Dow Jones predict the data to show that the U.S. economy added 55,000 jobs last month, what would be a big slowdown from March. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 4.3%.

JPMorgan’s trading desk sees the potential for significant market swings depending on what this morning’s report says. Private payrolls data for March released by ADP earlier this week came in hotter than economists anticipated.

Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee will join CNBC’s “Money Movers” today at 11 a.m. ET. Watch live on CNBC or CNBC+.

Hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz appeared to reignite yesterday, as the U.S. and Iran exchanged fire in the strategic shipping route. Each country claimed the other began the attack, which came as Iran reportedly considered a U.S. proposal to end the war.

As CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger notes, the strikes push the fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement further into jeopardy. However, President Donald Trump told an ABC News reporter last night that the ceasefire remains in effect, calling the attacks “just a love tap.”

Despite the hostilities in the strait, oil prices are flat this morning. Shell CEO Wael Sawan told investors yesterday that the oil market is short nearly 1 billion barrels — and it could only get worse as the war continues.

Shares of Cloudflare are 15% lower before the bell after the cloud firm announced it is cutting more than one-fifth of its workforce yesterday. News of the layoff plans followed Cloudflare’s first-quarter earnings report, which beat expectations on both lines.

In a blog post announcing the cuts, the San Francisco firm said that its internal AI usage increased by over 600% in the last three months as agentic AI “fundamentally changed” the way it works. CEO Matthew Prince also played up the role of agentic AI on the company’s earnings call, telling analysts that some roles “just aren’t the roles that we need for the future.”

There’s good news for used car shoppers: Prices fell in April for the first time this year. Cox Automotive’s Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index decreased 1.6% month over month, though it was still 1.8% higher than a year ago.

Cox said interest in electric vehicles has increased amid the spike in gas prices. But shoppers may still face some sticker shock: The average listing for a used EV is more than $9,000 higher than the overall market.

Cox chief economist Jeremy Robb said in a press release that higher energy prices “are soaking up a lot of the extra money in consumers’ pockets, and currently there’s no end in sight.”