S&P 500 futures opened slightly lower on Friday as investors looked ahead to the November jobs report.
Futures tied to the benchmark stock index fell 0.16%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.1% and Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.33%.
Shares of technology companies moved higher in post-quarter results trading. Asana, Scaler and Marvel all slipped up.
In regular trading, the Dow was down nearly 195 points and the S&P 500 was down 0.09%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 0.13%.
Those moves followed a mix of economic data Key Personal Consumption Expenditure Report This was slightly better than expected on a monthly basis and a larger than expected decline in the ISM manufacturing index. The so-called PCE deflator is one of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measures.
“Taken together, these two data sets could signal a soft landing for the U.S. economy,” Goldman Sachs’ Chris Hussey said in a note Thursday.
Investors focused on the Labor Department’s report on nonfarm payrolls, the unemployment rate and hourly wages due at 8:30 a.m. on Friday. Economists expect the economy to have added 200,000 jobs in November, according to Dow Jones. That’s down from 261,000 added in October.
Friday is the final monthly employment report, ahead of the Federal Reserve’s two-day meeting on December 13 and 14, in which the central bank is expected to raise its fed funds target rate by half a percentage point.
