Hi Reader, here's what you need to know for May 10th in 3:05 minutes.

☕️ Finimized over a mocha at Caféino in Casablanca, Morocco (25°C/77°F ⛅️)

Today's big stories

The US economy added far fewer jobs than expected last month
The pandemic’s been a major turning point for cybersecurity firms, so here are 10 of the most promising you might want to invest in – Read Now
Square reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings late last week, after the payment firm hopped on the crypto bandwagon

A Hard Day’s Perk

What’s Going On Here?

Data out on Friday showed the US economy added a lower-than-expected 266,000 jobs in April, even as employers do everything they can to woo new starters.

What Does This Mean?

There were around 8 million fewer Americans working in April compared to a pandemic-free February 2020, and the unemployment rate ticked up from 6% last month to 6.1%. That might not sound like much, but economists had been expecting it to drop to 5.8%. Turns out plenty of employers are reporting that they can’t find enough workers, which is all the more remarkable considering there are still over 10 million Americans out of work. There are plenty of reasons that might be, but one’s looking particularly plausible: some people are earning more in unemployment benefits than they would be doing the nine-to-five.

Why Should I Care?

The bigger picture: Work hard, play harder.
The hiring conundrum has encouraged lots of firms to up the salaries they’re offering applicants, if not throw in a signing bonus to sweeten the deal. That explains why wages actually climbed by more than expected, despite the drop-off in job growth. So with more money to spend and suddenly a lot more to spend it on, Americans are all set to throw around plenty of cash. And that – along with the highest prices for raw materials in almost a decade – is fueling fears of rising inflation.

For markets: Bonds are losing ground.
All this talk of rising inflation has got investors worried that the US central bank will raise interest rates sooner than expected to slow down climbing prices. That’s not great news for bonds, whose prices move inversely with interest rates (tweet this). And that’s not great news for one of the world’s biggest bond exchange-traded funds, which has seen investors pull more money out of the fund than they’ve put in for the sixth month in a row – the longest run since 2013.

You might also like: The winners and losers of surging inflation.

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2. Analyst Take

The Pandemic’s A Turning Point For Cybersecurity Firms

What’s Going On Here?

Cybersecurity was already big business before the pandemic: you only need to look at British firm Darktrace – whose stock jumped 32% when it listed last month – to see that.

But Covid’s boosted the industry even more. With remote working here to stay, all that sensitive data floating around is just waiting to be hoovered up by opportunistic hackers.

One research group is even predicting the market will be worth $400 billion by 2026 – and with quantum computing on the horizon, who knows where it goes from there?

And since this renewed emphasis on cybersecurity could be too good an opportunity for you to miss, we’ve compared ten of the most promising cybersecurity stocks.

That’s today’s Insight: why the pandemic’s worked out so well for cybersecurity firms, and which ones might be the best investments of the bunch.

Read or listen to the Insight here