Stocks Opened Higher after Jobs Data

U.S. stocks opened slightly higher on Thursday as investors weighed a soft jobs report as well as uncertainty hanging over Greece referendum.The Dow Jones Industrial Average lately added 29.29 points, or 0.16%, to 17,787.20. The S&P 500 gained 3.48 points, or 0.17%, to 2,080.90. The Nasdaq Composite was off 0.17 point, to 5,012.95.

U.S. job growth slowed in June and Americans left the labor force in droves, tempering expectations for a September interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve. Nonfarm payrolls increased 223,000 last month, with construction employment unchanged and the mining sector purging more jobs, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Officials in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana announced an $18.7 billion settlement with BP on Thursday that resolves years of litigation over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Tesla’s second-quarter deliveries surged 52 percent to set a company record exceeding 11,000 vehicles. The Palo Alto, California, electric car maker surpassed 10,000 vehicles for the first time in the first three months of the year and on Thursday said it had broken that record, delivering 11,507 vehicles.