NEW YORK, Sept 5, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Wall Street stocks retreated early Friday as a surprisingly strong US jobs report lifted the odds of an imminent Federal Reserve interest rate hike.

The US economy added 162,000 jobs in August, strongly outperforming analysts' expectations, according to a report that also boosted figures for June and July.

Futures markets placed the chances of a September interest increase at 60.2 percent compared with 49.4 percent on Thursday.

About an hour into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.5 percent at 53,397.76.

The broad-based S&P 500 dipped 0.3 percent to 7,727.62, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.2 percent to 26,537.43.

Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare described the report as "a bit of a shocker," adding that "the good news on nonfarm payrolls, though, was quickly interpreted as bad news for monetary policy."

For Jack Ablin of Cresset Capital, the jobs data was "certainly too good for the Fed to ignore," he told AFP.

"It's pretty much a done deal that the Fed will raise rates in a couple of weeks" following the report, Ablin said.