U.S. Dollar gains on Euro/Others in Advance of Key U.S. Labor Data

Earlier gains in the common currency Euro were given up against the U.S. Dollar in Asian trading today following a rise in short covering.

The U.S. Dollar also made gains against the Japanese Yen and Swiss Franc in advance of labor data from the United States, which will be released later this week; it is anticipated that the figures will show improvement over the previous period.

At 1:13 p.m. (JST) in Tokyo, versus the single currency Euro, the U.S. Dollar traded at $1.3440; earlier the Euro had been trading at $1.3530. Versus the Japanese Yen, the U.S. Dollar was trading at 92.66 Yen, a .1% increase from Friday’s late trade in New York; against the Swiss Franc, the U.S. Dollar rose nearly .8% to trade at 1.0677 Swiss Francs.

On Friday this week, non-farms payroll data from the U.S. Department of Labor will be released. A poll of analysts predicts that as many as 190,000 jobs will have been added in March, which would not only make it the largest single month increase since March of 2007, but only the second time there has been growth in the work sector since late 2007, when the recession began.

One strategist suggested, however, that the rise this month is only a rebound from February’s dismal numbers which were attributed to the blizzards that swept through large portions of the United States.