Alarmed by an ominously weak US jobs report, investors sought safety Friday from new fears about a global slowdown, sending the Dow Jones industrial average into a 275-point dive, the index’s biggest loss since last November.
The broad selloff wiped out the last of the index’s gains for the year.
Across Wall Street, fearful investors snapped up safer investments such as bonds, dragging the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note to a record low. Gold shot up $50 an ounce, and oil fell to its lowest since October.
‘‘The big worry now is that this economic slowdown is widening and accelerating,’’ said Sam Stovall, chief equity strategist at SP Capital IQ, a market research firm.
The Standard Poor’s 500 index and Nasdaq composite index both fell more than 2 percent. The Nasdaq has dropped more than 10 percent since its peak — what traders call a market correction. The SP 500 is just a point above correction territory.
American employers added just 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate increased to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent. Economists had forecast a gain of 158,000 jobs.
The report, considered the most important economic indicator each month, also said that hiring in March and April was considerably weaker than originally thought.
Earlier data showed weak economic conditions in Europe and Asia, too. Unemployment in the 17 countries that use the euro currency stayed at a record-high 11 percent in April, and unemployment reached almost 25 percent in Spain.
There were signs that growth in China, which helped sustain the global economy through the recession, is slowing significantly. China’s manufacturing sector weakened in May, according to surveys released Friday.
The Dow closed down 274.88 points, or 2.2 percent, at 12,118.57. The Dow is off 0.8 percent for the year; two months ago, it was up more than 8 percent for the year.
The Standard Poor’s 500 index fell 32.29 points, or 2.5 percent, to 1,278.04. The Nasdaq dropped 79.86, or 2.8 percent, to 2,747.48. Both indexes are still up for the year — 1.6 percent for the SP 500 and 5.5 percent for the Nasdaq.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note briefly fell to 1.44 percent, the lowest on record. It ended the day at 1.46 percent.
Gold for August delivery climbed $57.90, nearly 4 percent, to $1,622.10 per ounce.
‘‘Everybody’s looking for a safe haven,’’ said Adam Patti, CEO of IndexIQ, an asset management firm. He’s skeptical of that strategy, believing the swing was driven by short-term traders ‘‘looking to flip in and out of things,’’ rather than long-term investors willing to ride out a few bumps in the market.
May was the worst month for the stock market in two years by some measures. Investors’ worries about Europe’s debt crisis intensified as the month wore on. Greece’s political future is uncertain, and it appears increasingly likely to stop using the euro currency. That could rattle financial markets and make Greece’s economy — already hobbled — even weaker.
Friday’s jobs report drew traders’ attention back to the weakening US economy, said Todd Salamone, director of research for Schaeffer’s Investment Research in Cincinnati.
‘‘The weaker jobs report translates into anticipation of slower growth ahead and weaker corporate earnings, and that ratchets stock prices lower,’’ Salamone said.
The record-low yield on the 10-year Treasury note reflected rapid buying by traders with the biggest portfolios, including central banks, endowments, and pension funds, said Ira Jersey, US interest rate strategist at Credit Suisse. He said money managers were selling investments priced in euros and stashing their money in US securities.
Several analysts raised the possibility that the weakening economy will prompt more action by governments and central banks seeking to juice global economic activity.
The New York Times reported that a Morgan Stanley economist and former head of the Fed’s monetary policy division, Vincent Reinhart, said Friday the odds had climbed to 80 percent that the Fed’s policy-making committee would announce new measures at its meeting in three weeks.
The most likely option: buying several hundred billion dollars of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities in a fourth round of purchases that could expand the Fed’s portfolio to $3 trillion.
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