NEW YORK, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. stocks posted mixed weekly results as investors digested a batch of key economic data.

For the week, the Dow lost 0.92 percent, the S&P 500 erased 0.33 percent, but the Nasdaq gained 0.54 percent.

The unemployment rate declined to 3.5 percent in September, a 50-year low, the U.S. Labor Department said on Friday.

The department said total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 136,000 last month. Job growth has averaged 161,000 per month thus far in 2019, compared with an average monthly gain of 223,000 in 2018.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said Thursday its reading on the U.S. services sector fell last month to its lowest level since August 2016.

The non-manufacturing index registered 52.6 percent, 3.8 percentage points below the August reading of 56.4 percent, according to ISM's report. The figure was also lower than the estimated reading of 55.3 from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.

Respondents were mostly concerned about tariffs, labor resources and the direction of the economy, according to ISM.

Washington said Wednesday that it plans to impose tariffs on a wide range of goods from the European Union (EU) after the World Trade Organization (WTO) gave it permission to levy tariffs on 7.5 billion U.S. dollars of EU exports to counteract subsidies to Airbus.

ISM's report on the manufacturing sector was released on Tuesday showing the sector contracted in September.

The U.S. manufacturing PMI (purchasing managers' index) registered 47.8 percent, the lowest since June 2009, marking the second consecutive month of contraction, according to the report.

The reading is down 1.3 percentage points from the August reading of 49.1 percent, the report said. Any reading below 50 percent signals a contraction.

The Federal Reserve is largely expected to cut rates later this month. Expectations for a 25 basis-point rate cut were at 76.4 percent, according to the CME Group's FedWatch tool. Enditem

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