NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks were little changed early Friday after a mixed US jobs report and little visible progress in closely-watched US-China trade negotiations.
About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.1 percent at 23,913.64.
The broad-based S&P 500 also slipped 0.1 percent to 2,627.18, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.2 percent to 7,098.68.
The US economy added 164,000 jobs in April, which was below expectations. But the unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent, the lowest since December 2000.
Employers nationwide have said the pool of available workers is drying up, although the report showed only modest growth in wages.
Analysts said the report, while disappointing in some respects, was solid enough to keep the Federal Reserve on track to lift interest rates next month.
In Beijing, top Chinese and US officials concluded a second day of high-stakes talks aimed at averting a trade war between the two countries.
"Both sides recognize there are still big differences on some issues and that they need to continue to step up their work to make progress," China said in a statement released by the official Xinhua state news agency.
Among individual companies, Apple rose 2.0 percent after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway bought an additional 75 million shares of the technology giant.
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