US stock market opens higher with strong job gains

NEW YORK (AA) – The stock market opened higher Friday as the economy added more jobs than expected in July.

At the start of the day, the Dow Jones gained 101 points to 18,453. The S&P 500 was up seven points to 2,172, while the Nasdaq increased 23 points to 5,189.

The economy added 255,000 jobs in July, the Department of Labor announced Friday, beating the market expectation of 180,000.

In addition, non-farm payrolls figures for May were revised to 24,000 from 11,000; and the June figure was revised to 292,000 from 287,000.

Thus, average job gains in the last three months were up to 190,000 from 147,000.

Last month, when the non-farm payroll data for June came in strong, the stock market increased for two weeks straight, while indexes broke all-time record highs.