European markets climb after US jobs data

LONDON — Europe's main stock markets rose Friday despite mixed US job growth data and as investors set aside concerns about unrest in Egypt.London's FTSE 100 index of leading shares rose 0.23 percent to close at 5,997.38 points.In Paris the CAC 40 gained 0.26 percent to 4,047.21 points, while in Frankfurt the DAX climbed 0.31 percent to 7,216.21 points.European traders had been looking forward to January jobs data from the United States for cues on the health of the world's largest economy, but they shrugged off disappointing job creation data as a weather-related hiccup in the recovery.Elsewhere in Europe: Amsterdam advanced 0.17 percent, Brussels added 0.28 percent, Lisbon climbed 0.30 percent, Swiss stocks rose 0.60 percent, Milan rose 0.78 percent. Madrid shed 0.06 percent.US stocks opened little changed after the mixed employment report showed few new jobs were created in January, but that the unemployment rate had fallen to 9.0 percent from 9.4 percent."The US equity markets are nearly unchanged in morning action following a smaller-than-expected increase is US nonfarm payrolls, which caused an early advance to evaporate," said analysts at Charles Schwab."However, the labor report did reveal stronger-than-forecasted average hourly earnings and an unexpected drop in the unemployment rate," it said.Briefing.com analysts also pointed to the stronger US dollar and modest stock market rises in Europe and Asia as giving some resilience to the US markets.At 1700 GMT The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.07 percent at 12,053.33. The broad-based S&P 500 was down 0.10 percent to 1,305.78.The tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.08 percent to 2,755.98.US job creation ground to a halt in January as winter storms gripped broad swathes of the country, while the unemployment rate fell to a 22-month low of 9.0 percent, official data showed Friday.The economy added 36,000 nonfarm jobs, the Labour Department said, far fewer than the 148,000 expected by most analysts and down from 103,000 in December.For the second month i

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