Stocks Opened Higher on Jobs Data

U.S. stocks opened higher on Friday, after the stronger-than-expected monthly jobs report. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lately added 65.57 points, or 0.40%, to 16,579.67. The S&P 500 rose 10.75 points, or 0.55%, to 1,953.84. The Nasdaq Composite was up 45.41 points, or 0.97%, to 4,734.84.

U.S. job growth surged in December and employment for the prior two months was revised sharply higher, suggesting that a recent manufacturing-led slowdown in economic growth would be temporary. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 292,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. The unemployment rate held steady at a 7-1/2-year low of 5 percent.

China will remain in the spotlight in the coming week, with data that may help gauge how sharply growth is slowing in the world’s second-largest economy.

Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, which assembles the bulk of Apple Inc’s latest smartphones, saw its December revenues slump by a fifth and full-year sales miss expectations.The results, published on Friday, came amid growing concerns about slowing shipments of Apple’s latest iPhone 6S models.

Ford reported record sales of about 1.1 million vehicles in China last year.The automaker said Friday that its 2015 sales in the country were up 3 percent from the previous year. It also set a new monthly sales record in December, selling 124,768 vehicles. That’s up 27 percent from the prior-year period.