Source: The Canadian Press

The Toronto stock market headed for a sharply lower open Friday as positive job creation data in Canada was overshadowed by an American employment report that widely missed expectations.

The U.S. jobs data and fresh worries about the European government debt crisis, this time centred around Hungary. sent the Canadian dollar lower, the euro to a four-year-low and pushed investors to the safe haven zone of U.S. Treasuries.

The U.S. Labour Department reported that 430,000 jobs were created last month versus the 517,000 that analysts had expected — a report that will likely overshadow Canada’s better-than-expected jobs report for May.

The Canadian currency was down 0.35 of a cent at 95.69 cents US after job creation in Canada during May came in at 24,700 jobs. Economists had expected a modest increase of 15,000 after almost 109,000 jobs were created during April.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial futures tumbled 212 points to 10,046, the S&P 500 futures fell 24.2 points to 1,079.4 and the Nasdaq futures dropped Markets were already rattled after a spokesman for Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban was quoted as saying the nation’s economy is in a “grave situation.”

That sent the Hungarian florint down sharply and pushed the euro down to US$1.2041.

“Comments from the PM’s spokesman, Peter Szijjarto, raised the possibility that Hungary could default on its debts and that the new government would (bizarrely) not implement austerity measures,” said analysts at RBC Capital Markets.

“The new right-wing government said that the previous administration had lied about the true state of the fiscal accounts and the deficit was double the officially agreed IMF target of 3.8% of GDP.”

The stronger American dollar and demand worries pushed commodity prices lower.

The July crude contract on the Nymex lost $1.36 to US$73.25 a barrel.

The August bullion contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange lost $1.60 to US$1,208.40 an ounce while the July copper copper contract in New York fell seven cents to US$2.88 a pound.

Markets have been under selling pressure for weeks now after a debt crisis that started with Greece morphed into worries about the effect of massive spending cuts by heavily-indebted countries on economic growth — and concerns about whether the euro currency itself can survive.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average fell 0.1%, while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index shed less than 0.1%.

London’s FTSE 100 index lost 0.53%, Frankfurt’s DAX lost 0.3% and the Paris CAC 40 declined 1.06%.