* U.S. stock futures up, oil down after U.S. jobs data
* MSCI world equity index flat
By Carolyn Cohn
LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - U.S. jobs data boosted stocks and briefly hit the dollar on Friday and oil fell as investors digested data showing a rise in the U.S. unemployment rate but a lower than expected number of job losses last month.
U.S. employers slashed non-farm payrolls by 524,000 in December, driving the unemployment rate to 7.2 percent, its highest level in almost 16 years.
However, the payrolls drop was slightly less than the Reuters forecast of a 550,000 drop and a comfort to investors predicting worse news following grim data earlier this week on private sector payrolls.
"The numbers look better than I think many were anticipating," said Anthony Conroy, head trader at BNY Convergex in New York.
"This is bad, but it isn't as bad as people were anticipating."
U.S. stock futures pointed to a positive opening on Wall Street.
The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 was up 1 percent.
World stocks as measured by MSCI were marginally lower.
Oil initially fell $1 a barrel on the increase in the overall size of unemployment, which suggests lower U.S. demand for crude. Oil recovered some losses to $41.25.
On foreign exchange markets, the dollar initially fell around a third of a cent against the euro but quickly recouped those losses to trade at $1.3620, up around 0.7 percent on the day. It was nearly half a percent higher against a basket of major currencies.
The U.S. unit also rose 0.3 percent against the yen at 91.33 yen.
Euro zone government bonds briefly pared gains following the data before recovering. March Bund futures were trading at 124, up 41 ticks on the day.
Two-year paper yielded 1.556 percent, slightly less than in late Thursday trade while 10-year cash yields were flat at 3.10 percent. (Additional reporting by Jeremy Gaunt; Editing by Ron Askew)