Investing.com - The Australian rose to two-week highs against its U.S. counterpart on Thursday, helped by the release of upbeat Australian jobs data, while the New Zealand dollar slipped lower as the greenback mildly recovered from recent losses.
AUD/USD gained 0.40% to 1.7467, the highest since May 3.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the number of employed people rose by 37,400 in April, beating expectations for an increase of 5,000.
The number of employed people climbed by 60.000 in March, whose figure was revised from a previously estimated 60,900 decline.
The report also showed that Australia’s unemployment rate ticked down to 5.7% last month from 5.9% in March, confounding expectations for an unchanged reading.
NZD/USD slipped 0.19% to trade at 0.6930.
Meanwhile, the greenback erased some of the losses posted following reports U.S. President Donald Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to end the agency's investigation into ties between former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia.
The U.S. dollar had already come under broad selling pressure after news that Trump shared sensitive intelligence with Russia's foreign minister in a meeting last week.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed on Wednesday by the Justice Department as a special counsel to take over the probe into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was up 0.20% to 97.53, just off fresh six-month lows of 97.28 hit overnight.