NEW YORK, Oct 4: Stocks surged on Friday, racking up a third straight day of gains, after a report showing US employers added jobs for the first time in eight months boosted investors’ expectations for an economic rebound.

The rally helped major market gauges notch their biggest weekly gains in at least four months and helped them retake much of the ground lost in a sharp slide that began last week that pulled them to their lowest levels in at least a month on Tuesday.

The latest economic data helped soothe worries that the economic rebound would be held back by weakness in employment growth, which had been dogging Wall Street in recent weeks.

Everyone has signed on to believe that the economy has, in fact, recovered. The question is whether it would be with or without the job market, said Peter Gottlieb, president of Gottlieb Investment Management. This latest report would seem to indicate that the job market was starting to respond to the turn in the economy.

Technology stocks, like semiconductor giant Intel Corp., led the charge into positive territory.

The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 44.35 points, or 2.42 per cent, to 1,880.57, based on the latest available figures. The broad Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed 9.61 points, or 0.94 per cent, to 1,029.85, and the blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average rallied 84.51 points, or 0.89 per cent, to 9,572.31.

Trading was active, with about 1.5 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange and 2 billion traded on Nasdaq.

For the week, the Nasdaq Composite ended with a gain of 4.9 per cent, and the Dow finished with a gain of 2.8 per cent. Both posted their biggest weekly gains since May. The S&P 500 rose 3.3 per cent for the week, its largest weekly gain since April.—Reuters