The Canadian dollar gained today with the help of the excellent employment report. While the loonie was unable to beat the US dollar, the currency demonstrated big gains against its other major peers.
Statistics Canada reported that Canadian employment grew by 35,400 jobs in January. It is a much bigger increase than gain of 4,700 predicted by analysts. As additional positive news, the unemployment rate slipped by 0.1 percentage point to 6.6 percent.
In a separate report, Statistics Canada revealed that building permits rose 7.7 percent in December. It is also a better reading than was forecast (4.8 percent).
The Canadian dollar did not manage to beat its US counterpart as US employment data, which is released at the same time as the Canadian one and often overshadows it, was equally stellar. But the loonie was able to gain on other majors, including the euro and the Japanese yen.
USD/CAD ticked up from 1.2433 to 1.2469 as of 15:51 GMT today. At the same time, EUR/CAD went down from 1.4266 to 1.4153 while CAD/JPY rallied from 94.47 to 95.63.
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