Bad news about jobs in the U.S. is keeping Wall Street futures in negative territory Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Labor is reporting the unemployment rate jumped to a nine-year high of 6.4% in June, instead of the expected 6.2%.

In a separate report, initial jobless claims in at 430,000 last week, a jump of 21,000 from the previous week.

Traders are also looking ahead to 10:00 ET when the Institute of Supply Management releases its latest numbers on the American services sector.

There are no major economic releases from Statistics Canada today.

In Europe, stocks are down. At midday, London’s FTSE100 is down 14.0 points to 3,992.90. Frankfurt’s DAX 30 index is down 13.88 points, or 0.4%, to 3,227.16, while Paris’s CAC40 index has declined 7.61 points, or 0.3%, to 3,071.46.

Overnight in Tokyo, stocks edged up to a nine-month high. The Nikkei Stock Average climbed 32.56 points, or 0.48%, to 9,624.80. Leading Thursday’s advance were blue-chip technology issues such as Matsushita Electric Industrial, Hitachi, Canon, Sony, NEC and Kyocera.

The Canadian dollar was down against the U.S. greenback in European trading early Thursday.

The loonie was trading at US74.46¢ in London. The Canadian currency gained 0.67 on Wednesday to close at US74.88¢ in Toronto.

U.S. stock markets are scheduled to close at 13:00 ET today as traders pack up early for the Independence Day long weekend.