By CountingPips.com
The US dollar has mixed against the other major currencies in the forex markets as US jobs data released today showed a better-than-expected result in January. The dollar has gained ground on the day versus the euro, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar while trading lower against the Canadian dollar and the British pound sterling.
The US stock markets, meanwhile, have been slightly lower in morning trading after yesterday’s sharp rise with the Dow Jones industrial average lower by almost 10 points
In commodities, oil has edged up slightly by $0.63 to the $91.40 level while gold futures have decreased by $2.20 to trade at the $1,337.40 level at time of writing.
Today’s ADP private employment report showed that private companies hired a total of 187,000 workers in the month of January. This data follows a downwardly revised gain of 247,000 workers in December after the original report had shown a rise of 297,000 workers.
Market forecasters and economists were expecting the jobs report to come in with a gain of approximately 140,000 jobs for the month. The advance in private January jobs continues a streak of 12 straight months of job increases for the ADP report.
The service sector saw an increase of 166,000 workers in January and the goods-producing sector registered a gain of 21,000 workers. Manufacturing jobs rose by 19,000 workers while the construction sector declined by 1,000 workers. The financial sector rose by 3,000 workers in January.
Large businesses added 11,000 workers for January while medium-size businesses hired 79,000 workers. Small businesses or companies with less than 50 workers also saw employment payrolls climb by 97,000 workers for the month.
The market-moving US nonfarm government payroll report is scheduled to be released on Friday at 13:30 GMT. Last month, the government report showed 103,000 workers were added to payrolls and the unemployment rate was at 9.4 percent. Early forecasts are looking for the payrolls report to increase by 135,000 workers.