us stocks opened lower on thursday to start the new month in the red as investors turned their attention from the house passing the debt ceiling deal late wednesday to a fresh batch of data about the state of the us labor market us stocks wrapped up a historic month for markets on wednesday as the nasdaq composite outperformed the dow by the widest margin since october 2001 stocks started june by trading marginally lower on the day after the us house of representatives voted 314117 in favor of raising the federal debtceiling on wednesday night keeping washington on track to avoid a default by june 5 but stocks failed to muster a relief bounce on the news although the sp 500 index continued to trade just shy of its 10month highs reached late last month as investors turned their attention to another batch of labormarket data the adp privatesector employment data released thursday at 815 am eastern showed that the us added 278000 in may surpassing economists expectations by nearly 100000 meanwhile the number of americans who applied for unemployment benefits at the end of may edged up to a onemonth high of 232000 according to the latest weekly data but still there were no signs of major layoffs peter boockvar chief investment officer at bleakley financial group said thursdays employment data were sending mixed signals about the state of the us labor market bottom line while the headline figure looked great the service sector net hiring was very mixed with bad breadth and that natural resourcemining job gain was out of the ordinary boockvar said in emailed commentary us manufacturing data thursday suggested that activity remained weak the sp global manufacturing pmi came in at 484 for may down from 502 in april additionally the may ism manufacturing report showed a slowdown last month with the gauge coming in at 469 down from 471 construction spending meanwhile showed growth of 12 in april following a revised gain of 03 during the prior month investor attention now turns to the may employment data from the us labor department due friday the us is expected to add 180000 jobs in may down from 253000 in the prior month economists polled by the wall street journal estimate that would be the secondsmallest increase this year the may jobs data and the may consumer price index inflation data are the last major items due before the federal reserves next policy meeting on june 14 the chances of a 25 basis point interest rate hike by the fed to a range of 525 to 55 on june 14 has fallen from 67 on wednesday to 36 on thursday stocks generally benefit from signs of steadier or falling borrowing costs suppressing market optimism though were signs that some of the ai exuberance that this week helped power the techheavy nasdaq 100 to a near 14month high was fading shares of c3ai inc owner of the doubtless coveted ticker ai slumped after delivering disappointing revenue guidance following wednesdays closing bell this content was created by marketwatch which is operated by dow jones  co marketwatch is published independently from dow jones newswires and the wall street journal