A disappointing figure for US job creation in April has sent US stocks lower on opening, with the 115,000 new jobs in the month below the modest expectations of forecasters.

In the first five minutes of trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 67.32 points, or 0.51 per cent, to 13,139.27.

The S&P 500 fell 8.46 (0.61 per cent) to 1383.11, while the tech-rich Nasdaq lost 27.12 (0.90 per cent) to 3997.18.

The jobs numbers were a mild disappointment to the market, offset somewhat by an improvement in the overall unemployment rate, which fell a tick to 8.1 per cent, the best since January 2009.

“The negatives clearly outweigh the positives in today’s report,” said Jeffrey Greenberg, an economist with Nomura Securities, pointing to the fall in the labour market participation rate that came with the report.

But Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency economics downplayed the number as a pause in what has been a fairly steady record of job creation over the past year.

“Disappointing, but we think it is a correction after a run of very strong household employment numbers rather than a shift in the trend,” he said.