Updated at: 1429 PST, Saturday, October 03, 2009
LONDON: World markets were hit by fresh fears over the outlook for the global economy on Friday, with stocks sliding in Asia and Europe and investors cowed by a downbeat snapshot of the US job market.

"The September (US jobs) report was bad in just about every respect... raising doubts about the recovery," said Briefing.com's Patrick O'Hare.

"Strikingly, the market has been more attentive to weaker-than-expected data than it has been in past weeks when it was quick to dismiss any disappointments in favour of a belief that future reports would only show improvement."

Europe's main stock markets extended their fall, closing lower for a fourth day with London's FTSE index of leading shares losing 1.17 percent to 4,988.7 points following the disappointing US employment data.

The US Labor Department announced that the US unemployment rate rose in September to 9.8 percent with 263,000 jobs cut.

The cuts were far worse than the 175,000 forecast by most economists and higher than the revised loss of 201,000 in August, according to the department's report on nonfarm payrolls, a key indicator of economic momentum.

In Paris the CAC 40 index lost 1.90 percent to close at 3,649.90 points and Frankfurt's DAX finished 1.56 lower at 5,467.90 points.