The US dollar weakened after the employment report came out worse than was expected, adding to concerns caused by the partial US government shutdown. It suggested that US economic growth was not stable even without politicians messing things up.
The employment data from Automatic Data Processing showed growth of 166,000 jobs in September, which was below the forecast of 177,000. Moreover, the August increase was revised down from 176,000 to 159,000. Clearly, the labor market did not perform as well as market participants have hoped for.
Usually, reports from ADP have limited impact as traders wait for non-farm payrolls that are released during the same week and non-official data just helps to guess what government data will show. But it looks like the release of payrolls will be postponed because of the government shutdown, making ADP data the most important economic report this week.
EUR/USD rallied from 1.3524 to 1.3576 yesterday and traded at 1.3581 as of 00:48 GMT today. GBP/USD went up from 1.6194 to 1.6220 on the previous trading session and remained near this level on the current session. USD/JPY ticked down from 97.98 to 97.34 yesterday, staying near this price today.
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