Today’s unemployment data from the United Kingdom was rather disappointing yet it did not hurt the Great Britain pound much. The currency held relatively well against its major counterparts, rallying versus the euro and the Japanese yen and staying flat versus the US dollar.
The number of jobless claims rose by 7,000 in June from May while analysts promised a drop by 8,900. The unemployment rate rose unexpectedly by 0.1 percentage point to 5.6 percent. Wage inflation also fell short of expectations, rising by 3.2 percent instead of predicted 3.3 percent.
Yet all the negative data has not been able to drive the sterling down. It looks like prospects for an interest rate hike continue to support the currency.
GBP/USD traded close to its opening level of 1.5635 as of 18:27 GMT today after diving to 1.5576 intraday. At the same time, EUR/GBP declined from 0.7037 to 0.6999 and GBP/JPY rose from 192.89 to 193.55.
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