The USD/CAD pair fell sharply below the round-level support of 1.3700 after the release of the United States/Canada labor market data. The Loonie asset witnesses an intense sell-off as the US Dollar Index (DXY) drops swiftly on the soft US Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) report for October. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that job hiring was slow against expectations. US employers hired 150K job seekers, lower than expectations of 180K and 297K job additions in September (revised lower). The jobless rate rose to 3.9% from 3.8% expectations and the former reading. Monthly Average Hourly Earnings grew at a slower pace of 0.2% against 0.3% growth in September. The annual wage growth was 4.1%, higher than expectations of 4.0% but dropped from 4.2% reading a year ago. Slower job growth may allow Federal Reserve (Fed) policymakers to advocate for concluding the rate-tightening campaign.
Meanwhile, investors await the US ISM Services PMI for October, which will be published at 14:00 GMT. The Services PMI, which represents the service sector that accounts for two-thirds of the US economy is seen dropping to 53.0 against the former reading of 53.6. On the Canadian Dollar front, the labor force was expanded by 17.5K employees against expectations of 22.5K and September’s reading of 63.8K. The Unemployment Rate rose to 5.7% versus expectations of 5.6% and the former reading of 5.5%. A soft labor market report may allow Bank of Canada (BoC) policymakers to keep interest rates unchanged at 5% in the monetary policy meeting next month.
