North American stocks may open flat Friday as investors sort through mixed employment reports from Canada and the United States.

Canada’s unemployment dropped to 7% in December — its lowest level since May 2001, Statistics Canada reported today.

The jobless rate last month was down 0.3 percentage points from 7.3% in November.

The unemployment figure was better than the 7.2% rate some economists had been predicting for last month.

The Canadian economy added an estimated 34,000 jobs last month, bringing employment gains for 2004 to 228,000. Last year’s job growth of 1.4% was slightly lower than in 2003, when employment grew by 1.8%.

South of the border, U.S. nonfarm employers added 157,000 jobs to their payrolls in December, the Labor Department reported.

That brought the 2004 year-end total of new jobs to 2.2 million, the best showing in five years.

However, the December figures were below the 175,000 economists had been expecting. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.4%.

In other news, both personal and business bankruptcies in Canada rose in November from October, Industry Canada reported today. A total 7,359 individuals and 680 businesses declared bankruptcy in November compared with 7,098 individuals and 620 businesses in October.

On Thursday, North American markets finished in the black for the first time in the young new year, as oil stocks fuelled Bay Street and retail stocks helped boost Wall Street.

At close, the S&P/TSX was up 43.21 points or 0.48% to 9,064.26, halting a skid that saw the TSX post back-to-back triple-digit losses. Volume on the was 273.4 million shares.

The TSX Venture composite index was mostly unchanged, up 0.82 to 1,766.28.

In New York, the Dow industrial average held on to close up 25.05 points or 0.24% at 10,622.88, while the S&P 500 added 4.15 or 0.35% to 1,187.89. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was the only loser, slipping 1.24 points or 0.06% to 2,090.00.