U.S. stock futures rose, after equity benchmarks closed at records yesterday, as data showed employers added 217,000 jobs in May to push U.S. payrolls past their pre-recession peak. Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) expiring this month added 0.1 percent to 1,940.60 at 8:32 a.m. in New York. The 217,000 advance was broad-based and followed a 282,000 gain in April, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 215,000 increase. Unemployment in May was unchanged at 6.3 percent. Fed officials are watching the labor market as they move to complete their bond-purchase program late this year and start considering the timing of the first interest-rate increase since 2006. Central-bank stimulus has helped propel the S&P 500 higher by as much as 187 percent from its bear-market low in March 2009. The Fed said in its Beige Book business survey this week that the economy expanded at a modest to moderate pace last month as auto sales led household spending and the labor market improved. The survey, released two weeks before policy makers meet in Washington, supports Chair Janet Yellen’s view that the economy is rebounding from a 1 percent contraction in the first quarter caused largely by harsh winter weather. The S&P 500 rallied 0.7 percent yesterday as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi unveiled new plans to stimulate the region’s economy, including reducing the deposit rate to minus 0.1 percent from zero. A worsening in the euro area’s economic outlook and a prolonged spell of slow inflation prompted the ECB to act to preserve the fragile recovery in the world’s second-largest economy. The S&P 500 has rebounded 6.9 percent since a selloff in small-cap and Internet shares spread to the broader market, dragging the index to a two-month low in April. It advanced 2.1 percent in May for a fourth consecutive monthly increase. The measure trades at 16.4 times the projected earnings of its members, up from a multiple of 14.8 at the start of February. To contact the reporter on this story: Corinne Gretler in Zurich at cgretler1@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Cecile Vannucci at cvannucci1@bloomberg.net; Lynn Thomasson at lthomasson@bloomberg.net Jeff Sutherland, Srinivasan Sivabalan

Source