Bad employment news sees US stocks retreat

Stocks in the United States retreated today after a report on November employment revealed disappointing job growth and Intel Corp issued a forecast that fell short of expectations.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 68.14, or 0.7%, at 9,862.68, wiping out Thursday’s 57-point gain.

The market’s major indexes closed the week mixed, with the Nasdaq composite index down after briefly touching the 2,000 level on Wednesday.

While the government announced the creation of 57,000 new jobs last month, that figure was well off the 150,000 Wall Street expected. Intel, while predicting revenue growth, was not as upbeat as investors had hoped.

“There’s significant anticipation for recovery in technology, and it’s already an expensive sector of the market,” said Stuart Freeman, chief equity strategist for A G Edwards & Sons in St Louis.

While the Dow was down, broader stock indicators also fell, led by the technology group.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was down 8.22, or 0.8%, at 1,061.50, the Nasdaq composite index was down 30.98, or 1.6%, at 1,937.82, and the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was down 5.14, or 0.9%, at 539.01.

The Labour Department reported that the nation’s unemployment rate slipped to 5.9% in November, the lowest level in eight months.

But investors focused on a negative part of the report, job growth.

Poor job creation has been a consistent concern in recent weeks even as other signs of a strong recovery have emerged.

Economists worry that US companies, in a bid to keep operating costs low, are producing more overseas where salaries are lower rather than hiring in the states.

Without growth in jobs and salaries in the US, there are fears that consumer spending may sputter, undermining the recovery.

The downbeat reading on employment blunted the optimism that led the Dow to its highest level in 18 months on Thursday. For the week, the three main gauges finished mixed, with the Dow up 0.8%, the Nasdaq down 1.1% and the S&P 500 up 0.3%.

“We need 150,000 jobs per month just to maintain unemployment at the current level and to keep up with the population entering the work force, and we haven’t seen that amount of growth in more than two and a half years,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

Notably, the employment report showed that job losses at US factories continued for the 39th consecutive month in November.

But the pace has slowed and in a sign of possibly better days ahead for manufacturing, the Commerce Department said today that new orders to US factories rose by 2.2% in October, the strongest increase in 15 months and the fifth in the past six months.

Intel warned investors late on Thursday it would take a 600 million dollar charge after one of its wireless businesses failed to meet expectations. Intel also edged up the bottom range of its revenue forecasts, but some investors had been hoping for a more bullish forecast. The company’s shares fell 1.44dollars to 32.10 dollars.

Among the Dow’s other tech components, International Business Machines was down 78 cents at 90.64dollars and Hewlett-Packard was down 49 cents at 22.11dollars. Elsewhere in the Dow, Boeing was down 1.11dollars at 38.00dollars and Alcoa Inc was down 47 cents at 34.98dollars.

Going against the trend was Caterpillar Inc, up 1.56dollars at 76.50dollars following an upgrade from Citigroup Smith Barney.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 3-to-2 ratio on the New York Stock Exchange.