The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 6.37% yesterday, unchanged since the day before. The 15-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 5.46%, the same as one the day before. The 30-year FHA mortgage averaged 5.63% yesterday, having stayed the same. Meanwhile, the 30-year jumbo mortgage rate was 6.74%, reflecting no change.
The bigger picture
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics sent out an email. "The Employment Situation [aka jobs report] for September 2025 will be released on Thursday, November 20, 2025, at 8:30 AM Eastern Time," it said. " ... We will update the release calendar as new release dates are finalized."
Other government departments responsible for economic data will likely follow suit shortly with their own updated release schedules. But anyone expecting a cascade of delayed official data following the government's reopening is going to be disappointed.
A Barron's e-newsletter late on Friday reported, "The White House said this past week that the October jobs report and consumer price index might never be released."
In his DealBook e-newsletter for The New York Times on Saturday, Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote: "A reopened government hasn’t ended data delays. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to publish its September jobs report within days, the release of data that paints a more recent picture of the economy, including the labor market and inflation, will be delayed and may be incomplete. That means the Fed will have an incomplete picture of the economy at its next meeting on Dec. 9 and 10."
Federal Reserve still flying blind
That meeting of the Federal Reserve's rate-setting body (the Federal Open Market Committee or FOMC) is critical to the economy and mortgage rates. True, the committee doesn't directly set mortgage rates (only general interest rates on variable-rate debt generally), but the market that does determine mortgage rates moves in anticipation of the FOMC's six-weekly decisions.
That explains why mortgage rates rose at the end of last week.
Last Wednesday, the CME FedWatch tool indicated a 62.9% chance of such an FOMC cut. The following day, those odds fell to 49.6%, and on Friday they dropped further, to 45.8%. On Oct. 13, those odds had stood at 95.5%. Mortgage rates on those days averaged 6.28% on Wednesday, 6.33% on Thursday, and 6.37% on Friday, according to ICanBuy.
So, most investors now expect the FOMC to hold general interest rates steady on Dec. 10. That won't deliver the boost to economic growth and low mortgage rates that a cut would normally bring. But it might help to rein in inflationary pressures.
Mortgage Rate Trends: Past 90 Days
Purchase Rates
| Loan Type | Rate | APR | Daily Change | Monthly Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Year Fixed | 6.37% | 6.4% | +0% | +0.1% |
| 15-Year Fixed | 5.46% | 5.51% | +0% | +0.13% |
| 30-Year Fixed FHA | 5.63% | 6.84% | +0% | +0.08% |
| 30-Year Fixed VA | 5.7% | 5.84% | +0% | -0.01% |
| 30-Year Fixed USDA | 5.75% | 5.89% | +0% | +0.02% |
| 30-Year Fixed Jumbo | 6.74% | 6.76% | +0% | +0.11% |
| 5/6 Year ARM | 6.08% | 6.12% | +0% | -0.1% |
Refinance Rates
| Loan Type | Rate | APR | Daily Change | Monthly Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Year Fixed | 6.43% | 6.46% | +0% | +0.15% |
| 15-Year Fixed | 5.42% | 5.47% | +0% | +0.12% |
| 30-Year Fixed FHA | 5.59% | 6.8% | +0% | +0.08% |
| 30-Year Fixed VA | 5.73% | 5.86% | +0% | +-0% |
| 5/6 Year ARM | 6.15% | 6.18% | +0% | -0.03% |
What's coming up?
Although economic reports are usually the main drivers of changes to mortgage rates, they're not the only ones. The general mood in markets and economically consequential news can also affect those rates. News items concerning employment, inflation, tariffs and deficit funding are especially influential at the moment.
With a government reopening underway, we can anticipate the publication of official reports to slowly return to normal. Had the shutdown been brief, we could have expected a flood of official economic reports on reopening. But the length of the hiatus means that it is no longer the case. Data won't have been collected — let alone compiled and prepared for publication — during the shutdown. So, delayed or even canceled reports are inevitable.
That means that this week's calendar is far from certain. September's jobs report should be released on Thursday, but that might be the only official data all week.
The Barron's e-newsletter we mentioned earlier laid out the non-governmental data due: "Other information [this] week includes the minutes from the FOMC’s late-October meeting, released on Wednesday, along with the Census Bureau’s housing starts data, released on Thursday. On Friday, S&P Global releases both its Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes."
Mortgage rates today
There is only one economic report on today's MarketWatch economic calendar. It's the Empire State manufacturing survey for November, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Mortgage rates rarely react to this particular report.
