US non-farm payrolls provided nasty surprise for dollar bulls, sending the US currency down, as they came out much worse than was expected. The greenback halted its rally but not necessarily lost upward momentum completely, and it reached new highs for the year against some of its peers before retreating.
US employers added just 142,000 jobs in August, according to the official data released today. It was nowhere near the expected increase of 226,000 and July’s 212k. At the same time, the unemployment rate ticked down 0.1 percentage point to 6.1 percent, in line with expectations.
As one might expect, the dollar was hit by the news, yet the damage was not as big as it could have been. In fact, today’s decline looked more like a correction after yesterday’s huge gains than a reaction to an important economic release. The greenback was event attempting to gain on the Great Britain pound, which is weighed down by the upcoming Scotland’s referendum, though currently the dollar trades near the opening level versus the sterling.
EUR/USD rose from 1.2945 to 1.2933 as of 19:21 GMT today following the drop to 1.2922, which was close to the lowest level in more than a year. GBP/USD traded at 1.6325 after falling from 1.6327 to 1.6281 — the weakest rate since February 6. USD/JPY fell from 105.27 to 105.07, retreating from the highest level since October 2008 — 105.71.
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