US retail giant Walmart reported higher quarterly revenue Thursday and raised its financial outlook, in better-than-expected results as it won over households hit by rising costs of living.The earnings report of Walmart, which caters to buyers across income groups,is seen as a key gauge of consumer behavior as Americans become more price-sensitive.The company’s revenues rose 5.8 percent to $179.5 billion for the three months ending October 31, exceeding analyst expectations.Its earnings per share also came in above estimates at 62 cents.Walmart lifted its outlook for the fiscal year too, saying it expected net sales to grow between 4.8 percent and 5.1 percent, up from a previously anticipated 3.75 percent to 4.75 percent increase.”We saw strength across income cohorts, and especially with higher-income households,” said Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon in an earnings call.In the United States, he added, consumers are “still spending, with upper- and middle-income households driving our growth,” while lower-income families face more pressure.Investors have been watching for signs that consumers feel the squeeze from higher costs as President Donald Trump’s tariffs flow through the world’s biggest economy.There has not been a sharp inflation surge since he imposed wave after wave of duties on different sectors and trading partners but policymakers note that the full effect of steeper duties has yet to be seen.Meanwhile, prices have continued rising, more noticeably in some sectors than others.McMillon noted that the firm was working to resist “upward pressure on our cost of goods.”Prices at Walmart’s US stores rose 1.3 percent, the company said, lower than overall consumer inflation and a sign that it has been able to ease the effects of Trump’s tariffs.Walmart added that it has seen a smaller impact from duties than it had expected early in the year, and that staff have worked to manage costs by juggling inventory, price gaps and product offerings.McMillon said in a statement that e-commerce was a “bright spot” this quarter, growing 27 percent globally.Walmart shares rose 5.9 percent around 1845 GMT.Thursday’s report came shortly after fellow retailer Target posted a fall in quarterly sales, while home improvement chain Home Depot reported lower-than-expected demand in results earlier this week.This underscored concerns about US consumption, a key driver of the economy in recent years. Consumer spending, propped up by a resilient jobs market, had buoyed the economy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.But the jobs market has been cooling, while businesses find themselves hit by higher import costs. Consumers in turn have become more price-sensitive.Walmart said Thursday that it saw gains across categories in its US market, ranging from groceries to general merchandise.The big-box retailer added that “customer value proposition with everyday low prices and increased convenience is resonating.”It said its revenue uptick came with strength across all segments.Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, noted that Walmart has acquired new shoppers from higher income brackets, expanding from its core footprint of groceries and essentials.”While the gains currently being made here are not quite as sharp as they were a couple of years back, the numbers are still rising as more people turn to Walmart for great value and to save money,” he added.Walmart’s earnings are closely monitored this quarter also as policymakers and investors saw a pause in official economic data releases during a record-long government shutdown between October and mid-November.On Thursday, Walmart said it will transfer the listing of its common stock to the Nasdaq, and start trading there on December 9.Come February 2026, CEO McMillon will be succeeded by John Furner, who has served as president of Walmart US.

The US jobless rate crept up in September although hiring exceeded analyst expectations, according to a delayed employment report published Thursday after a record-long government shutdown.The figures, marking the last official jobs report before the Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting, paint a mixed picture of a softening — but not rapidly crumbling — labor market.This could deepen a divide in the central bank on whether a third straight interest rate cut is warranted in December, with some officials already pushing for lower rates to boost the economy and others likely arguing that policymakers can wait a little longer.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lauded the latest figures, saying they “showed the American economy remains strong.”The world’s biggest economy added 119,000 jobs in September — a robust uptick from August — but the unemployment rate edged up from 4.3 percent to 4.4 percent, said the Labor Department.Meanwhile, revised data for August showed that the employment situation was gloomier than originally estimated, with the economy shedding 4,000 jobs, rather than adding 22,000 as had been reported.Analysts note that even though unemployment ticked higher, this appears to be because more people entered the labor force seeking jobs.Thursday’s publication marks the first official snapshot of the overall labor market’s health in over two months, due to a 43-day government shutdown that ended just last week.But this also means that the data is backward-looking, at a time when the jobs market has been weakening amid mass firing of federal workers and the turmoil from President Donald Trump’s multiple tariffs on imports.A sharply weakening jobs market could nudge the Fed towards further rate cuts to support the economy, but the central bank is also trying to keep inflation in check.Traders now see a 60 percent chance the Fed will keep rates unchanged in December, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.- Temporary reassurance -The sharp hiring rebound “soothes concerns that the labor market was on the precipice of a large downturn and removes urgency for another rate cut,” said Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic.She added that the unemployment increase was “for good reasons as more people came into the labor force looking for a job, driving up the labor force participation rate 0.1 percentage point to 62.4 percent.”Overall, the latest report showed “a somewhat softer labor market, but not one that is rapidly declining in strength,” said Mortgage Bankers Association chief economist Mike Fratantoni.Yet, even if the jobs market was not “crumbling before the government shutdown,” federal employment likely fell more steeply in October, warned Oxford Economics lead economist Nancy Vanden Houten.This is because “workers who signed up for the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program will drop off payrolls,” she said.The Labor Department is not publishing unemployment figures for October, saying that the shutdown had impacted some survey data collection.Instead of releasing a full jobs report for that month, available figures will be put out alongside November’s numbers on December 16.According to Thursday’s report, job losses occurred in transportation and warehousing, as well as in the federal government in September — even as there were gains in areas like health care.Federal government employment dropped by 3,000 and is down by 97,000 since reaching a peak in January, the report added.Average hourly earnings rose by 0.2 percent to $36.67 in September.The overall hiring figure was higher than analysts expected, with surveys of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal expecting job gains of 50,000 instead.