NEW YORK: Blockbuster job creation helped push US stocks to new records on Friday, with an added boost from news of Pfizer's new Covid-19 treatment. The US economy added a better-than-expected 531,000 jobs last month as a wide range of industries took on workers, and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent, Labor Department data showed.
The better-than-expected result indicated hiring is resurging as Covid-19 infections decline, and job gains in August and September were 235,000 stronger than originally reported.
The jobs report sent all three main indices on Wall Street to new record highs, with the broad-based S&P 500 advancing 0.4 percent for a two percent gain for the week. The tech-heavy Nasdaq smashed through the 16,000 point level for the first time during the session, before closing just shy of that threshold.
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