NEW YORK: The US dollar fell against the yen on Tuesday after the government estimated the world’s largest economy created nearly a million fewer jobs from April 2024 to March 2025, suggesting a far weaker labor market than what initial numbers showed in the 12-month period.
The greenback briefly extended losses in the wake of the payrolls revisions, but last trimmed them to trade at 147.94 yen, still down 0.3 percent on the day.
The dollar gained against other currencies, meanwhile, recovering from Monday’s losses as investors braced for the US consumer prices index data on Thursday.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the payrolls numbers were revised down by 911,000 jobs in the 12 months to March. In previous 12-month period through March 2024, the level of employment was slashed by 598,000 jobs.
According to Action Economics, the downward revision was the largest figure on record, topping the -824,000 reading in March of 2009 and the -818,000 figure in March last year. The revision implies job reductions of 76,000 per month for the 12-month time frame.
“The only thing growing faster than job-growth skepticism is the pressure on the Federal Reserve to finally sneak in some interest rate cuts because nothing says economic cooling (than) jobs turning into ghost stories,” said Michael Ashley Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point in El Segundo, California.
“Payroll revisions just turned the job story from fairytale to audit trail with a BLS saying the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs between April 2024 and March 2025, the biggest reality check in years, which is another way of saying the jobs fairy just clawed back a lot of cheer.”
The dollar index rose 0.3 percent to 97.67, while the euro extended losses to USD1.1721, down 0.4 percent on the day.
Against the Swiss franc, the dollar rose 0.3 percent to 0.7959 franc.
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