NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices jumped to a new record above $106 Friday but extended their recent pattern of choppy trading after a weak jobs report convinced many traders that the Federal Reserve's interest rate cutting campaign will continue.

Employers cut 63,000 jobs in February, the biggest drop in five years, the Labor Department said. Investors can react to such news in one of two ways: by selling on the prospect that the economy, and demand for oil, is cooling, or by buying on a conviction that bad economic data makes it more likely the Fed will cut rates.

On Friday, investors engaged in a little of both, sending oil prices down more than a dollar at one moment, and propelling them to new records the next.

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"The higher the market goes, the more volatile it becomes," said Darin Newsom, senior analyst at DTN in Omaha, Neb. "Does it mean that the rally is over? No."

Light, sweet crude for April delivery fell 36 cents to $105.11 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after setting a new trading record of $106.54.

At the pump, meanwhile, gas prices extended their march toward new records, rising 0.4 cent to a national average of $3.189 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Gas prices are 68 cents higher than a year ago, and within a nickel of last May's record price of $3.227 a gallon. Many analysts expect prices to jump much higher as driving demand picks up in the spring.

Lower interest rates tend to weaken the dollar, and many analysts believe the weak dollar is the reason why oil has set new inflation-adjusted records three times this week, and risen 23 percent in less than a month.

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