Disappointing US job creation numbers sent Wall Street stocks falling in early trade Friday, confirming that the US economy has hit a weak patch in the past month.
The news hit the Nasdaq the hardest, as the share prices of tech giants heavily tied to consumer spending all took significant hits, Apple falling 1.8 percent and Microsoft losing 1.3 percent.
The net number of jobs created in April in the world's largest economy, at 115,000, was well below the already modest expectations of forecasters, and was underpinned by a fall in the labor market participation rate -- all a signal that households are still not doing well.
The numbers were offset somewhat by an improvement in the overall unemployment rate, which fell a tick to 8.1 percent, the best since January 2009.
But the markets focused on the new jobs number.
A half-hour into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 100.02 points, or 0.76 percent, to 13,106.57.
The S&P 500 fell 12.98 (0.93 percent) to 1,378.59, while the tech-rich Nasdaq lost 38.46 (1.27 percent) to 2.985.84.
"The negatives clearly outweigh the positives in today's report," said Jeffrey Greenberg, an economist with Nomura Securities, pointing to the fall in the labor market participation rate that came with the report.
Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency economics downplayed the number as a pause in what has been a fairly steady record of job creation over the past year.
"Disappointing, but we think it is a correction after a run of very strong household employment numbers rather than a shift in the trend," he said.
Among the Dow blue chips, Bank of America led the losers with a 2.5 percent fall.
On the Nasdaq, Google fell 1.2 percent, Priceline 1.0 percent, and Intel 1.2 percent.
Bond prices rose. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 1.90 percent from 1.92 percent Thursday, while the 30-year was slipped to 3.10 percent from 3.11 percent.
Bond prices go down as yields go up.
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