Investing.com - The U.S. dollar gained against its major counterparts in Asian trade Friday, following the release of encouraging U.S. labor data and a vote by German lawmakers to approve an expansion of the European bailout fund.
In mid-day Asian trade, the greenback was higher against the euro, with EUR/USD falling 0.27% to hit 1.3558.
Earlier Thursday, German lawmakers voted to approve an expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility, with only 85 of 523 legislators opposing the vote.
The number of opposing votes from within Chancellor Angela’s Merkel’s center-right coalition, was viewed as a barometer of her strength in negotiating new details of the plan to address Europe’s debt crisis.
Later in the day, the U.S. Department of Labor released data for the past week, showing that the number of Americans filing for unemployment assistance fell more than expected, to a seasonally adjusted 391,000 from 428,000 the prior week.
Market expectation were for the weekly figure to drop to 420,000.
Wall Street retreated from early session gains to close mixed on Thursday; The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.30% to 11,154.00, the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.43% to 2,480.76, while the S&P 500 added 0.81% to 1,160.40.
Meanwhile, the greenback was higher against the British pound, with GBP/USD down 0.17% to hit 1.5601.
The dollar was lower against the Japanese yen but up against the Swiss franc with USD/JPY falling 0.32% to hit 76.58, and USD/CHF higher by 0.20% to hit 0.8989.
The greenback was higher against its Canadian, Australian and New Zealand counterparts with USD/CAD up 0.17% to hit 1.0379, AUD/USD down by 0.17% to hit 0.9764, and NZD/USD falling 0.49% to hit 0.7670.
The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies, was up 0.11% at 78.57.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis was scheduled to release monthly figures on personal spending and personal income later Friday.