(Bloomberg) -- A dollar gauge fell to the day’s low after a mixed US jobs report weakened the case for Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes this year. The loonie was lagging behind all peers in the Group of 10 after Canada reported a rise in the unemployment rate.
- The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was down 0.1%
- US employers added to payrolls for a second month in April, marking the first back-to-back advance in nearly a year. Nonfarm payrolls rose 115,000 last month after a surge in March, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data out Friday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey called for a 65,000 increase.
- The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3%
- “Report was good but not great,” said Alex Cohen, a foreign-exchange strategist at Bank of America Corp. “Mixed when considering wages, participation rate”
- “So the NFP aspect is arguably not as important to the Fed as the unemployment rate is,” he said. “This number doesn’t imply hikes right now”
- “Geopolitics is still the key driver right now, and inflation is of more immediate concern than the labor market,” said Andrew Hazlett, a foreign-exchange trader at Monex Inc.
- The US and Iran clashed overnight near the Strait of Hormuz, an escalation that threatens to further fracture a fragile ceasefire
- USD/CAD rose 0.2% to 1.3688
- The Canadian economy shed 17,700 jobs in April while more people looked for work, pushing the unemployment rate up to 6.9%.
- Although employment on a year-over-year basis was up 67,000, it declined by 112,000 over the first four months of 2026, Statistics Canada reported on Friday.
- Swaps traders pared their expectations of Bank of Canada tightening into the end of the year
- USD/JPY fell 0.2% to 156.59
- GBP/USD jumped 0.4% to 1.3615
- Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had no plans to step aside as Labour leader after early results in local elections showed Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK racking up sweeping gains over Britain’s governing part
Reporting by Anya Andrianova
