Last week ended with the highly anticipated jobs report from the United States. The data, consisting of Average Hourly Earnings, the Unemployment Rate, ADP Nonfarm Employment Change and Nonfarm Payrolls releases, gives a complete picture of the state of the United States employment market.
The Nonfarm Payroll release, representing a change in the number of employed people during the previous month apart from the farming industry, has positively surprised investors with growth to 215,000 working places compared to 206,000 expected. The number has however declined in parallel with the previous results of 245,000.
The next component of the jobs report, presented to the markets by the Average Hourly Earnings, also did well, as it showed an upturn of 0.3%. Keeping in mind that the previous month's results were -0.1% and market consensus expected just 0.2%, this outcome was quite outstanding.
The unemployment rate announcement, however, calmed down the excitement, revealing a rise to 5.0%, which was the first expansion since June last year. That could probably explain why the US dollar stayed unaffected to usually such a significant release, with the US dollar index remaining to trade around the 94.50 mark, being its 5-month low.
Proceeding to this trading week, it began with news from Australia. Here, the monthly building approvals number has indicated a significant rise to 3.1% from -6.6% of the March outcome. The retail sales number dropped from 0.3% to 0.0% this month. The AUD/USD nevertheless remained trading at its 9-month high.
Later on, at 9:30 am London time the UK monthly Construction PMI data will come into the spotlight. The indicator of the economic health of the construction industry, this time, is expected to increase slightly to 54.3, up from 54.2 last time. A number higher than forecasted could likely give support to the weakening British pound.