Dollar falls on better than expected job data

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NEW YORK, May 6 (Xinhua) -- The dollar fell against major currencies on Wednesday amid a better than expected report about employment in U.S. private sector.

U.S. private employers cut 491,000 jobs in April, according to the research group Automatic Data Processing (ADP). It was much smaller than a loss of 650,000 jobs expected by analysts.

The ADP report showed that job losses decelerated across all sectors and all firm sizes. Usually the ADP report would foretell the non-farm payroll data released by the U.S. Labor Department.

Nomura Economic Research revised its forecast for the decline in non-farm payroll to 575,000 from 625,000 on the news of private employment. The government's non-farm job report is due on Friday.

Employment is likely to decline for at least several more months, although perhaps not as rapidly as during the last six months, according to Joel Prakken, Chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers.

Financial stocks jumped as investors were gaining confidence on results of the "stress test" to major banks, which will be released on Thursday. It was reported that American Express, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon would not need to raise more capital.

The euro bought 1.3348 dollars in late New York trading compared with 1.3313 dollars it bought late Tuesday. The pound rose to 1.5132 dollars from 1.5070 dollars.

The dollar fell to 1.1670 Canadian dollars from 1.1759 Canadian dollars, and fell to 1.1308 Swiss francs from 1.1343 Swiss francs. It fell to 98.32 Japanese yen from 98.98 Japanese yen.