(Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange ended sharply lower on Friday after the release of the monthly U.S. labor market report showed a lower-than-expected number of jobs, raising uncertainty over whether the Fed will cut interest rates.

The Dow Jones index fell 1.01%, or 410.34 points, to 40,345.41 points.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 lost -94.99 points, or -1.73%, to 5,408.42 points.

The Nasdaq Composite fell by -436.83 points, or -2.55%, to 16,690.832 points.

The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s recorded their biggest weekly declines since March 2023, while the Nasdaq’s last drop was in January 2022.

The Labor Department’s much-anticipated employment report, which came after a series of worrying data on the U.S. economy, showed that nonfarm payrolls rose by 142,000 in August, compared with an estimate of 160,000 by economists polled by Reuters. The unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent last month, in line with expectations after rising to 4.3 percent the previous month.

The U.S. labor market is under scrutiny from investors after an unexpected rise in the unemployment rate sparked recession fears nearly a month ago, sending the Nasdaq down more than 10% and sending global markets into a tailspin.

Analysts said Friday’s data should give the Fed more confidence in cutting rates by 50 basis points instead of 25.

“If we start seeing layoffs in the next couple of months, that means the timing (of a rate cut) was too late. Markets will be down until next week when the Fed definitively announces a cut, which could put pressure on them to cut 50 basis points instead of 25,” said Lou Basenese, president of MDB Capital in New York.

In terms of values, mega-capitalizations ended down, such as Nvidia (-4%), Tesla (-8.4%), Alphabet (-4%) and Amazon (-3.7%).

Broadcom fell 10.4% after it said it expected fourth-quarter revenue to fall slightly short of expectations, hurt by weak spending in its broadband segment.

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