Investing.com - The dollar fell against the other major currencies on Monday, as Friday's downbeat U.S. employment data dampened expectations for a U.S. rate hike before the end of the year.
The dollar was higher against the yen, with USD/JPY up 0.33% at 120.29, off Friday's one-month low of 118.66, as investors locked in profits on the greenback’s fall.
The Labor Department reported on Friday that the U.S. economy added just 142,000 jobs last month, well below expectations of the 203,000 expected by economists.
August’s reading was revised down to 135,000, from the initial reported figure of 173,000.
Average hourly earnings were flat month-on-month and the labor force participation rate fell to just 62.4%, down from 62.6% in August. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.1%, in line with forecasts.
The report underlined fears that a slowdown in global economic growth has spread to the U.S. economy and prompted investors to push back expectations on the timing of an initial rate hike by the Federal Reserve to early 2016.
The dollar was lower against the euro, with EUR/USD gaining 0.61% to 1.1278.
Research group Markit earlier said Germany's services purchasing managers\' index slipped to 54.1 in September from 54.3 in August, while France's services PMI ticked up to 51.9 from 51.2.
Markit's services PMI for the entire euro zone fell to 53.7 last month from 54.0 in August.
Elsewhere, the dollar was lower against the pound and the Swiss franc, with GBP/USD up 0.15% at 1.5208 and with USD/CHF slipping 0.20% to 0.9698.
Sterling was hit after Markit reported that its U.K. services PMI fell to 53.3 in September from a reading of 55.6 the previous month. Analysts had expected the index to rise to 56.0 last month.
The Australian and New Zealand dollars were stronger, with AUD/USD gaining 0.77% to 0.7102 and with NZD/USD jumping 1.21% to 0.6522.
Data earlier showed that job advertisements in Australia increased by 3.9% in September after a 1.3% rise in August, whose figure was revised from a previously anticipated 1.0% gain.
Meanwhile, USD/CAD slid 0.61% to trade at 1.3070.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, declined 0.45% to 95.60.