The US dollar jumped to settle higher against the majority of other most-traded currencies due to overwhelmingly positive non-farm payrolls. While most analysts were optimistic about US employment, even they could not anticipate such impressive growth.
Non-farm payrolls demonstrated amazing growth by 321,000 in November, beating the optimistic consensus forecast of 231,000. On top of that, the previous month’s figure was revised positively from 214,000 to 243,000. Surprisingly enough, the unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 5.8 percent despite the huge employment growth.
The impressive data led to speculations among Forex market participants that the Federal Reserve may hike interest rates as soon as March. This in turn led to gains of the dollar against other majors.
EUR/USD dropped from 1.2377 to settle at 1.2289, reaching the new multi-year low of 1.2271 intraday. GBP/USD sank from 1.5672 to 1.5571, closing near the lowest level since September 2013. USD/JPY jumped as much as 1.1 percent to 121.43, reaching a new maximum in several years as well.
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