Investing.com - The Australian and New Zealand dollars moved lower against their U.S. counterpart on Wednesday, despite the release of upbeat data from New Zealand as fresh hopes for a 2016 rate hike by the Federal Reserve lifted demand for the greenback.
NZD/USD slid 0.34% to 0.7260.
Earlier Wednesday, Statistics New Zealand said that the number of employed people increased by 2.4% in the second quarter, exceeding expectations for a 0.6% gain and after a 1.2% rise in the three months to March.
The unemployment rate fell to 5.1% in the last quarter from 5.7% in the first quarter, compared to expectations for a slip to 5.3%.
AUD/USD fell 0.21% to trade at 0.7678.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on Wednesday that its wage price index edged up 0.5% in the second quarter, in line with expectations. Wage prices increased by 0.5% in the first quarter, whose figure was revised from a previously estimated uptick of 0.4%.
Year-on-year, wage prices rose 2.1% in the three months to June, beating expectations for a 2.0% gain.
But demand for the greenback strengthened broadly after New York Federal Reserve head William Dudley said on Tuesday that the U.S. is edging closer toward the point in time where it will be appropriate to raise interest rates further.
In addition, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said that two rate hikes in 2016 were a possibility.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was up 0.18% at 94.92, off the previous session’s seven-week low of 94.38.