Around 8:15 p.m., the greenback yielded 0.54% to 1.1358 dollars to the euro.
The dollar fell against the euro on Friday as the US economy created fewer jobs than economists expected in December, without changing the prospect of monetary tightening from the Fed.
Around 7:15 p.m. GMT, the greenback gave up 0.54% to 1.1358 dollars to the euro.
The dollar index, which measures the value of the greenback against six other major currencies, dropped 0.59% to 95.75 points.
Only 199,000 jobs were created in December in the United States, far from the 440,000 expected by economists, after already a mediocre month of November for the labor market.
Even though the unemployment rate fell to 3.9%, these dichotomies in the statistics reflect a difficult labor market recovery, subject to the vagaries of the pandemic. In addition, this data is getting along even before the Omicron variant spread across the country with its cohort of flight cancellations and returns to telecommuting.
“The dollar has a little bit of weakness today as the jobs report was disappointing for the second month in a row,” noted Marc Chandler, analyst for Bannockburn Global Forex.
But according to him, this strengthening of the euro and the British pound against the greenback (+ 0.40% to 1.3586 dollars per pound) was more a result of an adjustment of portfolios and “squaring of positions ” at the end of the week.
In the longer term, “the market is more concerned with inflation than the labor market” and the publication of price increases in the United States next week, should support the greenback again, according to the analyst.
“The euro has been sailing between $ 1.12 and $ 1.14 since the middle of November. I see it badly bursting the top of this range, with inflation next week which is expected to accelerate, ”explained the specialist.
In addition, the divergence in the monetary policies of central banks continues on both sides of the Atlantic, between the Fed and the ECB.
The idea that the US Federal Reserve will raise its key rates earlier than expected to fight inflation, even if it means supporting the economy and employment in the United States less, is still a consensus.
“The increase in wages has slowed less than expected, which suggests that inflationary pressures could settle in for a long time,” said Walid Koudmani, analyst at XTB.
For UBS analysts, 2022 will be a year of “transition”, with central banks shifting from massive support for the economy to more normal politics.
“At least, we hope so”, they qualify, recalling that similar forecasts had been made in early 2021, before the Delta and Omicron variants disrupt the recovery.
On the cryptocurrency side, bitcoin’s difficult start to the year continued (-3.37% to $ 41,669, after hitting $ 41,008, the lowest since the end of September).