NEW YORK, June 6 (UPI) -- Stocks failed to hold on to an opening surge Friday, closing mixed on the highest unemployment rate in nine years.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 21.49, or 0.24 percent, after being ahead 172 points early in the session, to close at 9,062.79 on Big Board active volume of 1.8 billion shares. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 18.59, or 1.13 percent, to close at 1.627.42.
The Labor Department reported unemployment at 6.1 percent, the highest rate in nine years. However, non-farm payrolls didn't fare as badly as was earlier feared. Some 17,000 jobs were cut in May, fewer than the 25,000 to 46,000 that had been forecast by economists. The economy lost 48,000 jobs in April.
"It looks like things are settling down a bit," Gary Thayer of A.G. Edwards & Sons told the Wall Street Journal.
"Investors are now looking at the economic glass as half full and this has fueled the market's gains of late," Bryan Piskorowski, market commentator at Prudential, told CBS MarketWatch.
