Falling Nonfarm Payrolls Fail to Support EUR/USD

Nonfarm payrolls is one of the most important indicators of the U.S. economy’s health. Market analysts expected it to grow up in January by 50,000. But in reality it didn’t grow at all, instead it dropped by 17,000. At first, this fueled dollar bears’ activity and drove EUR/USD up close to the historical borders, but then, after release of some other important indicators, it went down to about 1.4800.

The part of the employment report was the U.S. unemployment rate in January — it fell down from 5.0% to 4.9%.

Construction spendings in December fell down by 1.1%, faster than the analysts expected (0.5% drop).

Non-manufacturing ISM report on business activity in January resulted in PMI at 50.7%, showing an increase from the last month’s 48.4% and that it’s significantly better than the forecasted 47.5%.

Index of Consumer Confidence, reported by Reuters and University of Michigan, fell to 78.4 in January from 80.5 in December. Expected value for this indicator was 79.0.