Nonfarm payrolls increased by 638,00 last month, versus expectation of 600,000 and a 672,000 gain in September. The unemployment rate fell to 6.9% from 7.9% in the prior month.

STORY:

MARKET REACTION:

STOCKS: Equity index futures sharply pared losses, with S&P 500 e-minis down 6.25 points, or 0.18%BONDS: U.S. Treasury yields rose, with benchmark 10-year notes last down 13/32 in price to yield 0.8201%, from 0.778% late on Thursday.FOREX: The dollar index remained weaker and was last <=USD> down 0.453%

COMMENTS:

MICHAEL ENGLUND, CHIEF ECONOMIST, ACTION ECONOMICS, BOULDER, COLORADO

"Generally, the data was all quite strong, although the headline payroll number was held down by a big drop in government employment. But all the private data was strong."

"It raises prospects for fourth quarter growth. It's clearly a good sign for the economy, so it would put upward pressure on (Treasury) yields."

CHRISTOPHER GRISANTI, CHIEF EQUITY STRATEGIST, MAI CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, CLEVELAND

"I thought this was a very good report. Not only did the jobs come in higher, but the the unemployment rate was down sharply which makes for a good headline number and I was surprised at how strong it was.

"It's definitely good news."

RUSSELL PRICE, CHIEF ECONOMIST, AMERIPRISE FINANCIAL SERVICES INC, TROY, MICHIGAN

"It was better than I expected, particularly the private sector payrolls. But overall, it was a very encouraging report. Private payrolls at what 906,000 is so much higher than what the consensus had. That's leisure and entertainment coming back."

"The unemployment rate was also very encouraging, dropping down to 6.9%, despite the fact that there was a stronger-than-expected increase in the labor force participation rate."

"The job market is pretty broadly recovering and recovering better than most forecasters have expected. The same thing could be said for consumer demand, manufacturing activity, homebuilding and other facets of the economy. So, it certainly adds to that good recovery narrative."

JJ KINAHAN, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago

"Six straight months of good jobs gains, seeing the leisure places lead the way was kind of a nice thing but I hate to throw a little cold water on that but it seems like we are heading into a lot of states on lockdown about to come up too so it will be very interesting to see how that plays forward. Professional business services, that is big to see that rally, and construction was quite a surprise. To see those jobs coming back is really, really good. Personally, I was very surprised by that one. The fact is, yes it is only 638,000 jobs, but 783,000 of them were private sector jobs."

"Some of these were expected losses, particularly the census jobs in terms of what we lost in government, so it's a brighter picture actually than the headline number."

"I would expect the volatility in this number to continue to be off the charts. But construction, manufacturing and transportation and warehousing all really nice gains and those are three backbones to the economy."

(Compiled by the Global Finance & Markets Breaking News team)