The December jobs report easily beat expectations, highlighting continued resilience in the US labor market as employers added 256,000 jobs, well above the consensus forecast of 160,000. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1% from 4.2%, below economists’ expectations and reaching its lowest level since July.
The US dollar rose 80-100 pips, while other currencies hit multi-month or multi-year lows at virtually all levels.
The euro fell to a low of 1.0217 from 1.0306 before the data, but has since rallied 35 pips.
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At the lowest levels, the euro was at its worst level since 2022.
A particularly notable decline occurred in the Australian dollar, which broke the 2022 low in the jobs report and is now at its worst level since 2020.
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This report will give the Fed a headache and is the second solid number of +36K reads in October. That’s some of the first good data showing a real post-election bounce, though I’d caution that December employment is full of seasonal adjustments due to holidays and short-term retail hiring.