NEW YORK — Stocks finished lower Friday, with the Dow industrials logging their fifth straight weekly drop, after a gloomy May jobs report that was partly offset by more upbeat data on the service sector.
“The jobless data was clearly a shock to the system today, as investors were reminded that the economy is going nowhere fast,” said Keith Springer, president of Springer Financial Advisors in Sacramento, Calif.
The financial sector ended off the day’s lows, helping the benchmarks trim their decline, after the leader of a group of European finance ministers said new aid for Greece would be approved.
Scaling back from a 140-point drop, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 97.29 points, or 0.8 percent, to close at 12,151.26. For the week, shortened by Monday’s Memorial Day holiday, the blue-chip average lost 2.3 percent for its longest weekly losing streak since July 2004.
Twenty-eight of the blue-chip index’s 30 components lost ground Friday.
The sole blue-chip gainer was Wal-Mart, up 0.2 percent, after the discount retailer unveiled a $15 billion share-repurchase program.
Off 2.3 percent from last week’s close, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index shed 12.78 points, or 1 percent, to end at 1,300.16, with telecom off the most and energy faring best. The index has also fallen for five straight weeks, its longest weekly losing streak since July 2008.
The Nasdaq composite declined 40.53 points, or 1.5 percent, to close at 2,732.78, leaving the index down 2.3 percent on the week.
The benchmark indexes came off their session lows after the Institute for Supply Management reported its services index rose to 54.6 percent in May from 52.8 percent in April.
Ahead of the opening bell, the government reported tepid jobs growth in May, with the addition of only 54,000 nonfarm payrolls.
“The economy is still growing but clearly at a pace that is lackluster and certainly not fast enough to absorb many of those looking for work,” said Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak.
