NEW YORK: The dollar surrendered most of its gains to trade little changed on Friday after the release of a disappointing US jobs report that suggested the Federal Reserve could pull back from plans to accelerate tapering of its asset purchases and deliver less aggressive interest rate hikes.
US non-farm payrolls increased by 210,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls would advance by 550,000 jobs. Estimates ranged from as low as a gain of 306,000 jobs to as high as 800,000.
"With this jobs report it may give them (Fed) pause to say 'okay we don't have to accelerate in December. We can give it another few weeks until we have better data from Omicron and we know what we're dealing with,'" said Thomas Hayes, managing member at Great Hill Capital LLC in New York.
"They can keep ahead with their taper timeline, but accelerating at this point in an information vacuum where we don't have all the information on Omicron is irresponsible and hasty," said Hayes, referring to the new, highly contagious COVID-19 variant.
In early morning trading, the dollar index rose 0.1% to 96.214. The euro was slightly down at $1.1296.
Against the yen, the dollar was up 01% at 113.355.
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