The US dollar hit its lowest level in roughly six months against the euro on Friday after data showing US jobs growth rebounded sharply in April was not enough to shake investors' bullishness toward the euro ahead of the second round of France's presidential election. US nonfarm payrolls surged by 211,000 jobs last month, the Labour Department said, beating expectations of economists polled by Reuters for a gain of 185,000. The drop of one-tenth of a percentage point in the unemployment rate to 4.4 percent took it to its lowest level since May 2007.

Analysts said traders are anticipating that the euro will rise above a technical barrier of $1.10 against the dollar if, as expected, centrist Emmanuel Macron defeats anti-EU candidate Marine Le Pen in Sunday's French election, and were remaining bullish on the euro for that reason. They also said the weaker March jobs figure and labour force participation rate gave traders an excuse to continue holding the euro. The euro hit $1.0991, its highest since early November 2016, after the US jobs data and has risen to that level from a 14-year low of $1.0339 touched in early January. "People were looking for a Macron victory, the end of event risk from the French election, for that to push us through $1.10," said Greg Anderson, global head of foreign exchange strategy at BMO Capital Markets. "There's nothing in the payrolls data that is going to blow them out of the water from that." The dollar rose slightly against the yen and was last up 0.1 percent against the Japanese currency at 112.54 yen after the data, but remained below Thursday's roughly seven-week high of 113.04 yen. The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major rivals but the majority of whose weighting is against the euro, was last down 0.1 percent at 98.729 after touching a roughly six-month low of 98.678 after the jobs data.

Copyright Reuters, 2017