Source: The Canadian Press

North American stock markets looked to open higher Friday after job growth during April in Canada and the U.S. came in far above expectations.

The Dow Jones industrial futures moved up 64 points to 10,521 after the U.S. Labour Department reported that the economy cranked out 290,000 jobs last month, far higher than the 180,000 figure that had been expected.

Job gains were widespread with the American manufacturing sector alone gaining 44,000 jobs.

The jobless rate increased to 9.9% from 9.7%.

The Nasdaq futures gained 15.25 points to 1,901.25 while the S&P 500 futures were up 9.3 points to 1,131.7.

In Canada, the dollar was up 1.38 cents to 96.41 cents US after Statistics Canada reported that the economy racked up its biggest one-month gain ever for job creation. The agency said 108,700 jobs were created during April, which goes a long way toward reversing the losses of the 2008-09 recession.

It was also far higher than the 24,000 jobs that economists had forecast. However, because more Canadians went looking for work in April, the unemployment rate only dropped one-tenth of a point to 8.1%.

Despite the good employment news, nervousness is still high that Europe’s debt crisis could spread and dim prospects for a global economic recovery.

Those fears pushed the TSX down 33 points on Thursday while the Dow tumbled 348 points during a session that saw massive swings.

The TSX fell about 420 points at mid-afternoon while the Dow plunged almost 1,000 points. That huge drop was blamed in part on a trading error and regulators said they were reviewing what had happened.

But the drop fed into a prevailing fear that Greece’s debt crisis was spreading to Portugal and Spain and possibly further afield. Finance ministers from the Group of Seven nations will hold a teleconference later in the day to discuss the situation, Japan’s finance minister Naoto Kan said.

Stock markets weren’t alone in seeing massive swings — in the currency markets, the Canadian dollar plunged more than four U.S. cents.

Sovereign debt worry has pushed traders into the safe haven status of the U.S. dollar during this past week, which has depressed the loonie the commodity prices.

Selling pressure on the euro also abated somewhat with the currency trading around US$1.2736, up from US$1.2611 late Thursday.

Oil prices were up slightly Friday morning with the June crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange ahead 57 cents to US$77.68 a barrel. As of Thursday’s close, oil had lost 11.5% from an intraday high of US$87.15 on Monday.

Other commodity prices were mixed with June gold unchanged at US$1,197.30 while July copper rose two cents to US$3.14 a pound.

Four straight days of losses have left the TSX down about 3% for the week, leaving the main index up a slight points or so year to date. The Dow industrials are up a similar amount for 2010.

In Britain, where investors were grappling with uncertain general election results, the FTSE 100 index was down 0.8.

Germany’s DAX fell 1.14% while the CAC-40 in France was down 2.22%.

The showing in Europe followed big declines in Asia — Japan’s benchmark Nikkei index closed 3.1% lower.

China’s Shanghai Composite Index closed 1.9% lower while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index ended around 1.1% down.

In corporate news, GMP Capital Inc. (TSX:GMP) said it had a $62.4-million net loss in the first quarter as it wrote down the value of its EdgeStone business unit. Without the $80.5-million in charges related to EdgeStone, GMP’s adjusted net income was $13.6 million.

Enerplus Resources Fund (TSX:ERF, NYSE:ERF), a Calgary based oil and gas producer, reports its net profits for the first quarter surged to more than $80 million from $51.8 million even as the company generated lower production.