Stocks close lower over weak jobs report

Wall Street capped a wobbly day of trading with a broad slide for stocks Friday, after a weak jobs report raised questions about the Federal Reserve’s timeline to pare back its support for markets.

The S&P 500 fell 0.2 percent after wavering between small gains and losses for much of the day. The modest drop snapped a three-day winning streak for the benchmark index. Even so, it managed a 0.8 percent gain for the week, less than half of the index’s loss last week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 8.69 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 34,746.25, while the Nasdaq composite slid 74.48 points, or 0.5 percent, to 14,579.54.

Wall Street reacted with uncertainty and disappointment to the highly anticipated September jobs report. U.S. stocks moved up and down throughout the day, as did Treasury yields.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 1.60 percent from 1.57 percent late Thursday after dropping to 1.56 percent following the jobs report’s release.

Small company stocks fell more than the broader market. The Russell 2000 index dropped 17 points, or 0.8 percent, to 2,233.09.

Much of Wall Street assumed the job market had improved enough for the Fed to soon begin paring back its monthly purchases of bonds meant to hold down longer-term interest rates. Investors had also pegged the central bank to begin lifting short-term interest rates late next year. Current super-low interest rates have been one of the main forces driving stocks to record heights.

But Friday’s jobs report showed that employers added just 194,000 jobs last month, well short of the 479,000 that economists expected. Many investors still expect the Fed to stick to its timetable, but the numbers were weak enough to raise questions about whether it may wait longer to taper its bond purchases or to eventually raise short-term rates.

“The miss on jobs isn’t pretty — there’s no way around it,” said Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy at ETrade Financial, in a statement. “And many may believe it will cause the Fed pause in terms of their tapering strategy. But the jury is out on how the market will interpret the data.”

Inflation remains a big concern for investors after climbing to its highest level in at least a decade, in part because of snarled supply chains as the global economy reboots from the pandemic.

Rising energy prices have also contributed to inflation, and benchmark U.S. crude for delivery in November briefly topped $80 a barrel Friday. That’s the highest the front-month contract for U.S. oil has been since 2014.