The Canadian dollar rallied today after the release of domestic employment data. The currency logged especially big gains versus its US counterpart as US jobs data was far worse than the Canadian one.
Statistics Canada reported that the number of employed people rose by 27,700 in May from April. That was a far bigger increase than 5,000 predicted by experts. And while it was nowhere near the huge 106,500 gain logged in April, the fact that employment continued to grow after the big surge at all was impressive by itself. Furthermore, the whole increase was thanks to gains in full-time jobs.
Adding to the positive surprises, the unemployment rate edged down from 5.7% to 5.4%. That was a total surprise to specialists, who were expecting no change.
Released separately, the capacity utilization rate decreased to 80.9% in the first quarter of this year down from 81.8% in the fourth quarter of the previous year, demonstrating the third consecutive quarterly decline. The actual value was close to analysts’ forecasts.
Besides the domestic employment data, the Canadian currency got support from crude oil prices, which rallied more than 1% on Friday. (Update: By the end of the session’s close crude managed to rally almost 3%)
USD/CAD slumped from 1.3361 to 1.3279 as of 20:45 GMT today, touching the low of 1.3261 intraday. EUR/CAD declined from 1.5065 to 1.5049, and its daily low was at 1.5019. CAD/JPY gained from 81.11 to 81.45.
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