US. dollar rises on upbeat job data

The U.S. dollar rallied to recent highs against the euro and the yen on Friday as monthly job data for October beat expectations. The nonfarm sector added 171,000 new jobs last month, more than the 125,000 monthly level that economists expected, reported the Labor Department on Friday. The U.S. unemployment rate rose a notch to 7.9 percent in October with modest improvement in job gains, but still under the critical level of 8 percent. Moreover, new orders for U.S. manufactured goods rose 4.8 percent in September, evidence that the U.S. manufacturing sector was gaining momentum, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported Friday. The dollar reached a one-month high against the euro after data from the research institution Markit showed the euro-zone Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell sharply from September's 46. 1 to 45.4 in October. The dollar surged to a six-month high versus the yen to touch the level of 80.67 during Friday's trading as third-quarter corporate earnings in Japan generally underperformed expectations, which triggered speculations that the Bank of Japan will have to expand stimulus measures eventually. However, the rise of the dollar may be not sustainable due to the uncertainty of the U.S. election next week and the possibility that the economy may hit the "fiscal cliff". In late New York trading, the euro dropped to 1.2829 dollars from 1.2939 of the previous session and the British pound declined to 1.6021 dollars from 1.6125. The dollar went up to 0.9411 Swiss francs from 0.9321 but fell to 0.9956 Canadian dollars from 0.9962. The dollar bought 80.42 Japanese yen, higher than 80.18 in the previous session.