The main US benchmark indices have all risen as expected at Wall Street’s opening bell: the Nasdaq led with a 0.4% gain, while the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 rose by 0.3% apiece.

Apple shares were a big driver of gains thanks to reports in the Nikkei Asian Review that suppliers have been asked to increase production of the iPhone 11 by as much as 10%.

Apple shares gained 2%.

US stock market futures are indicating gentle increases are in store at the opening bell on Wall Street.

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones industrial average are both set to gain 0.2%, while the Nasdaq should gain 0.3%.

The jobs data have boosted the US dollar against its main trading pairs – it is up by 0.1% for the day.

However, the fact that sterling has fallen against both the euro and the dollar might suggest that Brexit updates may adding to the pressure on the pound.

It is down by 0.3% against the euro, and 0.2% against the US dollar.

Donald Trump’s trade war with China may be making its mark on the global economy (and particularly on manufacturers who pay tariffs), but the jobs report suggests the US economy is not quite in the doldrums.

Non-farm payrolls data for August were also revised up, with 168,000 jobs created rather than the 130,000 previously reported.

Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics, said:

The 136,000 increase in non-farm payrolls in September illustrates that while growth in employment (and broader activity) has slowed, it is not collapsing.

Manufacturing employment fell by only 2,000, which is surprisingly resilient given the slump in the ISM manufacturing index. Retail employment fell by 11,400, but that reflects structural change rather than cyclical weakness.

There is something for everyone in the jobs numbers.

Donald Trump, the US president, is clearly happy with the unemployment number. Unemployment has fallen to 3.5%, its lowest since December 1969, and below economists’ expectations of 3.7%.

However, average hourly earnings rose by 2.9% from a year earlier, below the 3.2% consensus. That – along with the lower-than-expected headline jobs number – might suggest that the unemployment rate is unsustainable.

That could support calls for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates in anticipation of a slowdown.

US stock market futures have risen slightly in the immediate aftermath of the jobs report.

The FTSE 100 has also gained – it’s now up by 0.6% for the day.

The market-implied probability of an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve on 30 October is 85%, according to CME Group’s handy Fedwatch tool (which is based on investors’ interest rate bets).

That means investors on average do not think that a rate cut is a certainty this month – but it is still thought of as the more likely outcome.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank led by Jim Reid said:

We haven’t quite got a full cut priced in but clearly we’ve seen a big step change in expectations this week given the data, and even an in-line payrolls reading today shouldn’t do much to change the narrative.

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell will have the chance to address the data at 7pm BST tonight when he makes some remarks at an event.

The effect of non-farm payrolls on assets may be tricky to work out at first glance.

John Velis, an FX and macro strategist at US investment bank BNY Mellon, said:

There is a lot riding on Friday’s job market report; if it disappoints – while it might increase the odds of policy easing into the end of the year – risky asset markets might finally begin to price in the prospects of more than a mild slowdown in the US economy, and bring asset prices down with them.

The employment components of the closely followed purchasing managers’ index surveys by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) both fell in data published this week, he added.

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, predicted a stronger September reading, but said the trend would be closer to a 50,000 monthly reading by the end of the year. He said:

The trade war is the story here, with manufacturing already in recession and the services sector now extremely nervous over the impact of tariffs on consumer goods.

So far, the threat to business has not triggered any increase in layoffs, but it’s just a matter of time.

The dollar could weaken if the jobs number surprises on the downside, according to Han Tan, a market analyst at FXTM, a foreign exchange trading firm. The greenback is about flat for the day against a trade-weighted basket of currencies.

Helena Morrissey, one of the UK’s few prominent female investors, has stepped down from her job at Legal & General Investment Management.

“I see a changing Britain and have a lot of ideas and other things that I want to achieve,” Morrissey said, according to Reuters.

Morrissey joined LGIM in 2017. She has reportedly been interviewed to replace Mark Carney as governor of the Bank of England.

Documents submitted to the Scottish court in the case to force an extension of the Article 50 Brexit negotiation period promise that the government will send a letter to the EU doing so “no later than 19 October” if there is no withdrawal deal.

The government did not publish its legal arguments in the case, but the barrister for the campaigners bringing the case has read them out in court.

The people bringing the case want to ensure there is no way the government can back out of their legal obligations, which could lead to the UK leaving without a deal.

The Guardian’s Scotland editor, Severin Carrell, is there. He tweeted:

Oil prices have risen on Friday, but the outlook continues to be dominated by investor concerns over weakening demand.

Brent crude futures prices gained 0.7% to more than $58 per barrel. However, that remained below the $60 mark at the start of the week, putting the North Sea benchmark on track for its second week of losses.

Poorer macroeconomic data has weighed on prices, despite increases in Saudi prices in the wake of attacks on key facilities last month which caused a spike in global crude prices, according to Warren Patterson and Wenyu Yao, commodity strategists at ING Economics.

The government’s road to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 depends on battery electric cars replacing petrol and diesel almost entirely. There’s a problem though: fossil fuels will leave big hole in the public finances.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has been looking at the problem, writes Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott.

Britain should move to a system of road pricing to combat congestion and compensate for the £28bn loss of revenue from fuel duty as the country makes the transition to electric vehicles, the IFS has said.

The thinktank said the government’s pledge that the UK would reach zero net emissions by 2050 meant the tax take from petrol and diesel would shrink to nothing over the coming decades and a new way to raise money from drivers was needed.

You can read more about the delicate transition (and the enormous subsidies given to fossil fuels at the moment) here:

Easyjet is considering snapping up assets from the collapsed travel operator Thomas Cook.

In an interview with German newspaper Die Welt, Easyjet chief executive Johan Lundgren said:

Of course, like all airlines and tour operators, we will look at what might be of interest to us from the Thomas Cook network. But there is no decision yet.

A mid-morning update on trading in London: the FTSE 100 has gained 0.4%, in part thanks to higher oil prices helping the weighty drilling contingent.

However, the FTSE is still on track for its worst week in more than a year and a half unless things pick up considerably in the next few hours.

The mid-cap FTSE 250 has gained 0.1%.

It was a similar story across Europe: after a bumpy week there have been moderate gains in the Euro Stoxx 600 index, although benchmark indices in Germany and France have only edged up.

Some more detail on the car registrations figures. There are a few moving parts, but essentially it is not a very bright outlook for the sector.

Ian Plummer, director at Auto Trader, warned to expect some jiggery-pokery around registrations data as carmakers try to prop up the numbers amid the Brexit-related downturn.

As they focus on hitting their annual targets, both manufacturers and retailers have been using tactics – such as self-registrations – to artificially buoy the numbers and overstate the natural level of demand for new cars, because they just aren’t seeing the consumer demand to reach the figures they need to organically.

This push activity will almost certainly continue next month ahead of the Brexit deadline, as the industry prepares for whatever the 31st has in store.

And more complications could come further down the line as carbon dioxide reduction targets mean that selling lower-emission diesels will be more attractive.

One small problem: consumers have turned away from diesels in their droves after scandals over emissions of nitrogen oxides. Diesel sales this year are down by a fifth.

One piece of good news: battery electric vehicles have more than doubled this year, and sales look to have accelerated recently. There is still a long way to go before they take a significant chunk out of petrol’s market share.

Some analysis on the SMMT car sales data from Howard Archer, chief economic adviser to the EY Item Club forecasters:

It has been fairly quiet on the Brexit front so far this morning – give them time – but here is one of the things that will drive the day in Westminster: one-time Conservative leadership contender Rory Stewart plans to resign.

Stewart said he will stand down at the next general election after resigning from the Conservative party.

The Guardian’s Peter Walker writes:

He announced his resignation in front of an audience of thousands on Thursday night at an event where he read out a letter in which an Eton housemaster described Boris Johnson as being guilty of “a gross failure of responsibility”.

This morning he then tweeted to confirm the news.

You can read the full story here:

Here’s some more detail on the Financial Conduct Authority’s proposed crackdown on uncompetitive insurance firms. Insurance company shares on the FTSE 100 have edged down following the announcement.

Six million home and motor insurance policy holders are overpaying a combined £1.2bn in premiums a year because insurance firms are not giving good deals to loyal customers, writes the Guardian’s Mark Sweney.

The FCA found widespread evidence of a so-called “loyalty penalty” whereby long-standing customers are effectively penalised for sticking with their contracts.

The report identifies a range of tactics being used by insurers including selling policies at a discount to new customers and boosting premiums when they renew, specifically targeting increases at those less likely to switch to a new provider for a better deal.

Potential remedies could include:

• Banning or restricting practices like raising prices for consumers who renew year on year or requiring firms to automatically move consumers to cheaper equivalent deals.
• Stopping practices that could discourage switching.
• Making firms publish information about price differentials between their customers.

You can read the full story here:

Bob Dudley’s replacement, Bernard Looney, has run BP’s oil exploration operations since April 2016, after a career at BP which started as a drilling engineer in 1991.

BP chairman Helge Lund said Looney has “all the right qualities to lead us through this transformational era” of the “energy transition”.

BP said Looney has driven “sustainable emissions reductions of almost 3 million tonnes CO2 equivalent in the past two years”. However, he has also expanded oil drilling into new countries, and he has been responsible for extracting more than 2.6 million barrels equivalent of oil and gas a day.

Looney, an Irishman, will earn £1.3m a year in annual salary, plus the chance of a maximum annual bonus (including any deferral) of up to 225% of that salary.

BP shares have gained 0.5% after the news of succession at the top.

Bob Dudley will step down from the oil supermajor after its annual results on 4 February, and he will retire completely on 31 March.

Dudley joined Amoco Corporation in 1979, becoming general manager for strategy by 1999, when it merged with BP. He worked as group vice president for BP’s renewables and alternative energy activities, before becoming responsible for BP’s exploration businesses in Russia, the Caspian region, Angola, Algeria and Egypt.

From 2003 to 2008 he was president and chief executive officer of TNK-BP, a joint venture in Russia that was highly profitable but ended in acrimony.

He returned to BP in 2009, but in 2010 he was thrust into the top position following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, in which a damaged rig spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Since then he has faced criticism over high pay even when the company lost money and the environment, amid an emerging consensus that an expanding oil sector is not compatible with limiting global heating.

He provoked laughter last year at an industry conference when he rejected calls for divestment from fossil fuels. Campaigners have described his plans to limit operational emissions as “greenwashing”.

John Lewis is looking for discounts from landlords amid struggles for the department store chain which pushed it to a loss for the first half of the year for the first time, according to the BBC.

Here are details from the report:

The BBC has learned that the retail giant has been telling landlords in some locations that it will withhold 20% of this quarter’s service charge.

These are the fees retailers pay on top of rent for services such as heating and security.

John Lewis said it had faced increased service fees at a time when it is trying to cut costs. Its statement said:

Over the last three years we have seen an increase in service charges of 20% and these continued increases are simply not acceptable, particularly in the absence of strenuous efforts by landlords to work collaboratively with us to reduce these costs.

The FTSE 100 has gained 0.2% at the open – after three days of falling.

There are currently no stocks on London’s blue-chip index that have moved by more than 2% in either direction.

Germany’s Dax 100 gained 0.1% (after a national holiday yesterday) and France’s Cac 40 gained 0.2%.