Wall Street expects the Labor Department report, which is due at 8:30 a.m. EST, will show the country's unemployment rate ticked up to 5 percent in February from January's 4.9 percent, according to Thomson/IFR. Payrolls are seen as rising by 25,000 compared with a loss of 17,000 in January.
A sour reading could weigh heavily on investors. Concerns about home foreclosures and further credit woes - a string of troubles that started when debt backed by home mortgages began to go bad - rippled through Wall Street on Thursday. The Dow Jones industrial average lost nearly 215 points, while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 2.20 percent.
Early Friday, Dow futures fell 49, or 0.41 percent, to 12,021. S&P 500 futures fell 5.00, or 0.38 percent, to 1,302.90, and the Nasdaq 100 index fell 4.25, or 0.25 percent, to 1,710.00.
Bond prices rose. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 3.50 percent from 3.59 percent late Thursday. The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices rose.
Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average closed down 3.27 percent after Wall Street's decline. In morning trading, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 1.12 percent, Germany's DAX index lost 1.29 percent, and France's CAC-40 slid 1.10 percent.