The Australian market looks set to open lower later this morning after falls on Wall Street on Friday night following a mixed jobs report.

The March SPI futures contract is down 40 points, at 5382.

The US economy added a solid 252,000 jobs in December, but analysts were concerned at weak wage growth. Hourly earnings were up only 1.7 per cent from a year ago, just keeping up with inflation.

In local economic news today, the Australian Bureau of Statistics releases housing finance figures for November, while the ANZ job advertisements series for December is also due out.

No major equities news is expected.

HIGHLIGHTS

– The Dow Jones industrial average fell 170.5 points, or 0.95 per cent, to 17,737.37, the S&P 500 lost 17.33 points, or 0.84 per cent, to 2044.81 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 32.12 points, or 0.68 per cent, to 4704.07

– London's FTSE 100 shed 1.05 per cent to close at 6501.14 points on Friday, while Frankfurt's DAX 30 lost 1.92 per cent to 9648.50 points and the CAC 40 in Paris dropped 1.90 per cent to 4178.07.

– The Aussie dollar began the new week trading at US$82.08, compared with Friday's local close of US$81.40.

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