Asian stock markets took a beating Monday as another setback for the U.S. economic recovery sent investors fleeing. Weak U.S. hiring in May pushed Wall Street indexes to their biggest declines of the year on Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 275 points, its biggest one-day decline since November. Japan's Nikkei 224 index dropped 1.9 percent to 8,277.56 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng tumbled 2.4 percent to 18,119.01.
South Korea's Kospi shed 2.9 percent to 1,781.99. Key indexes in mainland China and Singapore fell, while benchmarks in Taiwan and Indonesia were down more than 3 percent.
"US jobs numbers were not the only weak reading as manufacturing output data in China and the US were also lower, and euro area unemployment reached a record level," Stan Shamu of IG Markets in Melbourne, said in an email.
"There aren't many positives for risk assets at the moment," he said.
