LONDON: Europe's main stock markets advanced on Friday, as traders welcomed data that showed the US economy has recovered to a pre-crisis jobs level.
London's FTSE 100 index of top companies climbed 0.66 percent to close at 6,858.21 points, while Frankfurt's DAX 30 tacked on 0.40 percent to 9,987.19 points, and the CAC 40 in Paris added 0.71 percent to close at a new record high for the year at 4,581.12 points.
Madrid jumped 1.73 percent and Milan shot up 1.54 percent. "European stock markets pushed higher today, pleased with a US jobs report that neither under nor overwhelmed," said analyst Jasper Lawler at CMC Markets UK.
After the excitement on Thursday of the ECB lowering interest rates and announcing it would pump up to 400 billion euros ($545 billion) into banks to spur lending to businesses, attention focused on the monthly jobs report to gauge the health of the US economy.
The data showed the US economy added 217,000 jobs in May, bringing the total number of jobs in the country above the level at the beginning of the deep 2008-2009 recession for the first time.
'US expansion is solid':
Labor Department data showed that the total number of jobs reached 138.46 million in May, exceeding the previous peak of 138.36 million set in January 2008.
The unemployment rate held steady at 6.3 percent, after falling sharply from 6.7 percent in April.
"The underlying pace of US expansion is solid," said Berenberg bank economist Robert Wood.
He noted that despite snow disruptions at the beginning of the year, "jobs growth has accelerated from an average of 194,000 a month in 2013 to 214,000 a month so far in 2014."
Analyst Patrick O'Hare at Briefing.com said the May jobs report was "more of the same: continued, gradual improvement in the labour market."
"The added takeaway for the capital markets is that the report offered no basis to think expectations for the first rate hike by the Fed need to be moved forward," he said.
Wall Street also pushed higher on the positive data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.39 percent to 16,901.52 points in midday trading.
The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 0.37 percent to 1,947.67, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.50 percent to 4,317.50.
Wall Street indices had closed at record-highs on Thursday after the European Central Bank unveiled the measures to kick-start the stuttering eurozone economy.
European stock markets and the euro, the strength of which has been contributing to deflationary pressures, were only briefly impacted Thursday by the ECB's moves.
In a move hailed as "unprecedented" by analysts, the ECB lowered the rate at which it pays commercial banks for depositing their unused cash into negative territory for the time, cutting it from zero percent to minus 0.10 percent.
This means that banks will be charged for parking funds at the ECB, which hopes they might lend it on to businesses and consumers instead.
But the ECB moves have led to a drop in yields on eurozone bonds, with the rate of return on 10-year French government bonds falling to a record low of 1.656 percent in Friday trading.
Euro slips:
In foreign exchange trading, the European single currency drifted up to $1.3640 from $1.3662 late in New York on Thursday.
The euro slipped to 81.21 British pence from 81.23 pence. The British pound rose to $1.6795 from $1.6818 on Thursday.
On the London Bullion Market, gold rose to $1,247.50 an ounce on Friday compared with $1,252.50 the day before.
Asian shares mostly fell Friday, not getting much of a boost from Wall Street, having finished at record highs the previous day.
Tokyo was flat at 15,077.24 and Sydney rose 0.5 percent to 5,464.0. Shanghai fell 0.54 percent to 2,029.96 and Hong Kong shed 0.69 percent to 22,951.00.
Seoul was closed for a public holiday.
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