US non-farm payrolls released today were worse than abysmal, coming out weakest since 2010. Unsurprisingly, the US dollar crashed hard after the extremely negative data.
Non-farm payrolls grew just marginally by 38,000 in May. Forecasts have missed the mark completely, promising an increase by 159,000. Moreover, the previous month’s gain was revised negatively from 160,000 to 123,000.
Not all parts of the data were bad as the unemployment rate fell from 5.0% to 4.7%, more than analysts had predicted. Average hourly earnings grew by 0.2%, in line with expectation.
Yet markets paid no heed to the positive indicators, focusing on the bad part of the report instead and sending the dollar down.
EUR/USD rallied 1.4% from 1.1150 to 1.1308 as of 13:40 GMT today. GBP/USD climbed 1% from 1.4421 to 1.4568. USD/JPY sank as much as 1.6% from 108.87 to 107.15, trading near the lowest level since May 9.
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