Markets were higher in midday trade on Wall Street after the US Labor Department reported that 110,000 new jobs were created in September, near expected levels, although unemployment was also higher, up to 4.7 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.67 percent to 14,067.31, while the Nasdaq Composite had added 1.43 percent to 2,772.76 and the S&P 500 had gained 0.79 percent to 1,554.98.
The Nasdaq was helped by gains for internet search engine Google (NAS: GOOG; LSE: GGEA) and Research in Motion (NAS: RIMM; TSX: RIM.TO).
The manufacturer of the Blackberry hand-held device added 12.2 percent to $112.84 the day after it turned in a better than expected quarterly report on Thursday, while Google gained 2.6 percent to $594.05 after Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) set its target share price for next year at $700.
The financial services sector also saw gains.
Citigroup (NYSE: C) added 1.8 percent to $48.48, while Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) was up 2.4 percent to $76.56 even though it said it will write off $4.5 billion in bad loans in the third quarter.
Retailers also saw gains as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) added 1.2 percent to $45.53 and Target (NYSE: TGT) was up almost 4 percent to $67.77.