While you were sleeping: UPDATED Wall St mixed as jobs data offset oil rise

Stocks on Wall Street gave up earlier gains as a report showing that more Americans than expected filed for jobless benefits ahead of the government's monthly jobs data offset a rise in the price of oil.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 9.45 points to 17,660.71, while the Nasdaq Composite Index eased 0.2% to 4717.09. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index changed less than a point to finish at 2050.63

A Labor Department report showed that initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 274,000 for the week ended April 30.

On Friday, a report is expected to show US companies added 200,000 workers to their payrolls in April, according to a Bloomberg poll.

"We are assuming the move in claims is largely technical," Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York, told Reuters. "By all accounts, businesses cannot find the skilled labour they need."

The Federal Reserve is seen as increasingly unlikely to lift its target interest rate soon as headwinds in the global economy have curbed growth in the US.

However, the greenback strengthened as two Fed officials, James Bullard and John Williams, offered upbeat comments on the US jobs market and suggested a rate hike in June is not off the table.

"We continue to have the rhetoric of the Fed saying they want to have rates higher," Craig Collins, managing director of rates trading at Bank of Montreal in London, told Bloomberg.

"Regardless of what they say, the market is saying the likelihood of them going in the very near-term is diminished. We need an outlying number tomorrow for payrolls for it to have too much consequence on the market."

Energy shares advance
In the Dow, declines in shares of Merck and those of Caterpillar, last 1.9% and 1.8% weaker respectively, offset gains in shares of Walt Disney and those of IBM, last 1.2% and 1% higher respectively.

Energy shares in the S&P 500 index gained 0.7%, while heath care companies rose 0.4%.

US oil futures rose 1.2%, to $US44.32 a barrel, after rising by more than 5% earlier in the day, as investors reassessed the perceived threats to supply in Canada and Libya.

"The Canadian blaze, horrific as it is, is too far south of the real producing fields to cause real lasting damage to production there," John Kilduff, a partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital, told Reuters. "The Libyan barrels weren't really on the market anyway."

Shares of Kraft Heinz climbed 3.7% after earlier touching a record high after it posted a quarterly profit that bettered analysts' expectations.

Shares of Fitbit, however, sank 17.1% after the maker of wearable fitness devices and trackers reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings but offered a disappointing outlook for the current quarter.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index finished the session with a 0.3% gain from the previous close, closing higher for the first time in five days. Better-than-expected earnings from BT Group bolstered sentiment. The UK's FTSE 100 index gained 0.1% while Germany's DAX index rose 0.2%. France's CAC 40 index slipped 0.1%.

(BusinessDesk)