Dollar Rises vs. Pound & Yen on Improving Labor Market

The US dollar strengthened versus the Great Britain pound and the Japanese yen as the macroeconomic reports showed that the US jobs market improved, causing optimism about the future of the US economy. The currency retreated against the euro.

The non-farm employment change, according to the estimate of Automatic Data Processing Inc. released on March 2, posted the increase by 217,000 from January to February on a seasonally adjusted basis. The estimated change of employment from December to January was revised up to 189,000 from the previously reported increase of 187,000. The government report yesterday showed that the initial unemployment claims decreased by 20,000 to 368,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 388,000. The advance to 394,000 was expected.

The problems on the labor market were causing concerns among traders for a long time. Now the worries may ease a little. Today we’ll have the important report about the non-farm payroll that may prove the positive change of the US employment. The payrolls expected to show the increase by 191,000.

USD/JPY traded near 82.36 as of 3:26 GMT today after it jumped yesterday from 81.84 to 82.43. GBP/USD traded at 1.6276 after it dropped on the previous session from 1.6324 to 1.6275. EUR/USD traded at about 1.3952 after rising from 1.3865 to 1.3968 yesterday.

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