Wall Street stock futures dropped Friday morning on a surge in the U.S. jobless rate, suggesting markets would keep falling.

The U.S. jobless rate jumped to 6.1% in August as employment fell for an eighth-straight month.

The U.S. Labour Department said 84,000 jobs were lost in August, significantly higher than the 75,000 that economists had forecast.

Here at home, Canadian employers added 15,200 jobs in August as the national unemployment rate remained steady at 6.1%, Statistics Canada said.

Economists had been forecasting job growth of about 10,000 for last month.

The Canadian dollar opened at US93.90¢, up 0.40 cent from Thursday.

In other market news, Goldman Sachs put a “sell” Wall Street brokerage Merrill Lynch, citing expectations Merrill will incur further writedowns on top of US$5.7 billion disclosed in July.

The price of oil continued easing, moving below US$107 a barrel. Light sweet crude was down US$1.04 to US$106.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock index closed down 2.75% to 12,212.23. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index tumbled 2.2% to 19,933.28, falling below 20,000 for the first time in more than a year.

In Europe, the UK’s FTSE 100 was down 1.2% to 5,295.60, Germany’s DAX lost 1.7% and the French CAC 40 fell 1.3%.

On Thursday, the benchmark index of the Toronto Stock Exchange fell sharply of the third straight session Thursday, closing below 13,000 for the first time since March.

The S&P/TSX composite index fell 323.58 points, or 2.46%, to finish at 12,814.23.

All 10 of the TSX main groups closed lower.

The junior S&P/TSX Venture composite index fell 45.47 points, or 2.43%, to 1,829.43.

In New York, U.S. stock indices had their steepest decline in more than two months.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 344.65 points, or 2.99%, to 11,188.23, while the S&P 500 dropped 38.15 points, or 2.99%, to 1,236.83. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index tumbled 74.69 points, or 3.20%, to 2,259.04.