Wall Street Slumping On Soaring Oil Prices, Unemployment

June 6, 2008 2:46 p.m. EST

New York, NY (AHN) - Surging unemployment and oil prices have taken a heavy toll on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, sending the Wall Street bellwether index into a free-fall on Friday. The DJIA fell over 330 points as trading continues in the Big Apple; the Nasdaq Composite Index and the Standard and Poor's 500 Index were also firmly in the red.

Oil prices have jumped to around $136 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Thursday, the contract soared by $5.49, or 4.5 percent, which was a historic single biggest hike at NYMEX, to settle at $127.79 a barrel, increasing to $128.38 a barrel in after-hours trading.

"The bulls are running rampant and the bears have panicked," said oil industry analyst Stephen Schork, editor of the Schork Report told CNN. "It's pure hysteria, absolute panic."

More bad news for the U.S. economy came from a Labor Department report released Friday. The unemployment rate jumped more-than-expected by a half percentage point in May. The increase to 5.5 percent is the biggest rise in seasonally adjusted unemployment in 33 years.

Unemployment climbed by the highest rate in one-month period since February 1986.

AHN's Mayur Pahilajani contributed to this report.