A lousy week for Wall Street and Bay Street only got worse Friday as disappointing jobless reports for Canada and the U.S. sparked a sharp sell-off of North American markets, already suffering from a dose of record-setting oil prices.

At close Friday, Toronto’s S&P/TSX composite index pulled back slightly from a 100-point loss to finish the day down 91.2 points or 1.10% to 8176.68, erasing all gains for the year. The junior TSX Venture Exchange closed 2.21 points or 0.15% lower to 1496.82.

New York’s Dow industrial average fell 147.7 points or 1.48% to 9815.33 — a new low for 2004. The Nasdaq was off 44.74 points or 2.46% to 1776.89 while the S&P 500 lost 16.73 points or 1.55% to 1063.97.

The Canadian dollar rose 0.34 of a cent to US76.21¢ as the U.S. dollar sold off after release of the American jobs report.

After suffering through a week of rising oil prices — another record high was set Friday — and geopolitical uncertainty, markets were greeted with unemployment data for both countries that was considerably worse than expected.

Statistics Canada reported the unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a point to 7.2% for July. But there was a net gain of roughly 9,000 jobs, from June, a far cry from the 30,000 that had been expected.

In the U.S., only 32,000 jobs in July — more than 200,000 less than expected – as the unemployment rate dipped a tenth of a point to 5.5%. On top of that, job gains for the past two months were revised downward.

Adding to the gloom were the record-high crude oil prices. The price of light, sweet crude for September deliver hit a fresh record US$44.73 a barrel despite reassurances from OPEC that it’s prepared to raise output by over a million barrels a day. Later, crude prices relaxed slightly, still down 13 cents to US$44.28 a barrel.

On the markets, many investors fled to gold. The TSX gold sub-index jumped 2.74%. It was the only TSX share group in the black. Technology shares lead the way down, off 3.7%, while energy stocks (despite the rise in oil prices) were off 1.52% and financial fell 0.5%.