The U.S. dollar was seen maintaining its bullish momentum during the week which was marked by the leading indicators reports such as the ISM manufacturing and non-manufacturing PMI’s and the FOMC meeting alongside the Friday’s payrolls report.

Overall, the data suggested that the U.S. economy is on track to sustain another rate hike as early as June and the Fed officials were also seen signaling their willingness to tolerate above 2% inflation in the short term.

U.S. unemployment rate falls to 3.9%

The U.S. economy was seen adding 164k jobs for the month of April. This was slightly below the market consensus of 190k, data from the U.S. Labor department showed on Friday.

The payrolls report for March which was initially reported at 103k was revised higher to show a 135k print during the month.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a 17 and half year low to 3.9% beating estimates of a decline to 4.0%. This was the lowest unemployment rate since December 2000.

Wage growth was however subdued with average hourly earnings rising $0.01 during the month to a 0.1% increase. The pace of wage growth was slightly lower than the previous month where wage growth grew at a pace of 0.2%.

On an annual basis, the wage growth rose 2.6% for April.

The broader measure of unemployment that includes those who want to work but unable to find work and those in the part time jobs sector fell to 7.8% during the reported month.

In March, the underemployment rate was seen at 8.0%.

Most of the job gains came from construction payrolls that increased 17k during the month after declining for the first time in eight months in March.

Jobs gains from other sectors included the manufacturing sector which added 24k jobs while the retail sector added 1,800 jobs during the period.

The weaker pace of wage growth assuaged concerns about a faster than expected rate hikes from the Fed.

At the previous FOMC meeting, the central bank signaled that it was willing to tolerate a higher pace of inflation, above the 2.0% target level.

This was evident from the fact that the central bank had introduced the word “symmetric inflation” to its language.

The slower pace of wage growth is expected to see the markets maintaining the view about the Federal Resserve staying on track for a June 2018 rate hike.

Eurozone GDP rises 0.4% in Q1, 2018

The first quarter GDP data for the three months ending March 2018 showed a slowdown in the pace of the economic activity in the Eurozone.

Data from Eurostat released last week showed that the Eurozone economy advanced 0.4% on the quarter.

This was in line with the economists’ expectations but slower than the 0.7% increase seen in the previous quarter.

The slowdown in the activity was broadly attributed to a number of factors that includes the cold weather and strikes across some parts of the Eurozone.

However, the fact remains that some of the leading indicators already suggested a slowdown in the Eurozone economy, most notably from Germany as exports and imports fell.

Economists still remain hopeful that growth will pick up in the coming quarter.

Recent data for April suggested a moderation in the decline but business activity needs to pick up in order to confirm a rebound in the economy.

UK PMI’s point to another month of slowdown

The all sector PMI index for the UK for the month of April was seen rising at a slower than expected pace.

The data suggested that the UK’s economy might be going through continued slowdown in the economy into the start of the second quarter of the year.

The news comes after the preliminary GDP reports showed that the UK’s economy advanced at a pace of just 0.1% in the first quarter ending 2018.

The manufacturing PMI was seen falling to 53.9 on the index.

This was below estimates of 54.8 and was weaker than March’s manufacturing PMI print of 54.9.

The data for March saw a modest revision from 55.1. Manufacturing PMI was seen slipping for the sixth consecutive month.

The construction PMI fared slightly better as the index rebounded to 52.5 in April.

This comes following the decline in the index to 47.0 just the month before which indicated that the sector was in contraction.

The rebound came amid an increase in construction work which was hindered due to the bad weather.

Finally, the services PMI which has been in the forefront of the UK’s GDP growth was seen rising slightly in the month of April.

Data from IHS Markit showed that services PMI eased to 52.8 in April which missed estimates of 54.5. However, compared to March, services PMI increased from 51.7.