By CountingPips.com
The U.S. dollar has been mostly weaker in forex trading today against the other major currencies following today’s government employment report. The British pound, Swiss franc, Japanese yen,New Zealand dollar, Australian dollar and Canadian dollar have all gained ground versus the American currency today while the euro has gained slightly since the report but trades mostly unchanged on the day versus the greenback.
The US stock markets, meanwhile, have been trading higher today with the Dow Jones industrial average increasing by over 45 points and the Dow briefly reached the 11,000 point mark for the first time since May. The NASDAQ has also increased by over 10 points and the S&P 500 is higher by over 4 points at time of writing.
Oil has risen by $0.94 to the $82.66 level while gold has continued its upward trajectory with an increase by $10.30 dollars to trade at the $1344.80 level.
The U.S. Nonfarm Payrolls data released today showed that jobs declined by more than expected in September as the private-sector added jobs and government hiring continued to decline. The Department of Labor nonfarm payrolls report showed that U.S. payrolls lost 95,000 jobs in September while the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.6 percent. September was the fourth straight month that the nonfarm payroll report has declined although private companies continued to add workers for a ninth straight month with a rise of 64,000 workers.
August’s employment data was revised to a loss of 57,000 jobs after originally showing a decline of 54,000 and follows a revised decline of 66,000 jobs lost in July.
The September report came in worse than the market forecasts that were expecting a loss of approximately 5,000 jobs and beat the expectations that the unemployment rate would reach 9.7 percent.
The decline in jobs was led by the loss of 159,000 workers in government jobs in September as temporary census government workers fell by 77,000 for the month. This follows decreases in government hiring in July by 183,000 workers and in August by 150,000 workers.
The goods producing sector saw a decline of 22,000 workers in September as manufacturing lost 6,000 jobs in construction jobs fell by 21,000 workers.
The service-providing sector created 86,000 total jobs in September with education and health services adding 17,000 workers while professional and business services also added 14,000 jobs. Retail trade added approximately 6,000 jobs for the month while leisure and hospitality jobs increased by 38,000.