[CITIC Securities: Fed Expected to Cut Rates Once by 25bps in the Second Half of the Year] Jin10 News, May 11 — CITIC Securities' research report states that the U.S. added more non-farm payrolls than expected in April 2026, with the unemployment rate at 4.3%, in line with expectations. We believe the April data better reflects the current state of the U.S. job market compared to the previous two months for three reasons: first, fewer one-off factors in April; second, higher corporate response rates in April; and third, the impact of the Birth-Death model was the smallest among the last four months of data. On the demand side, the U.S. job market in April showed overall resilience with marginally increasing layoff pressure. On the supply side, labor force participation and the employment-to-population ratio declined, but the participation rate for the core working-age group (25–54 years old) remained stable, indicating that the decline in overall participation was not due to a mass exit of core labor but rather aging and retirement factors dragging down the overall rate. Regarding Federal Reserve monetary policy, we maintain our previous view: after Walsh takes over, if the Iran situation eases and oil prices fall, leading to a cooling of inflation expectations, the baseline scenario for the second half of the year would be a single rate cut of 25bps.