1st LD Writethru: U.S. dollar soars on strong jobs report

The U.S. dollar spiked against other major currencies Friday as the country's nonfarm payroll report came out better than expected, bolstering market expectation for an interest-rate hike later this month.

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 211,000 in November, beating market consensus of 190,000, said the U.S. Labor Department Friday.

Analysts said the solid job growth "cleared the last hurdle" for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by year-end for the first time in almost a decade.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers,was up 0.75 percent at 98.358 in late trading.

In other economic news, the U.S. Commerce Department said Friday that the country's goods and services deficit was 43.9 billion U.S. dollars in October, up 1.4 billion dollars from 42.5 billion dollars in September.

In late New York trading, the euro fell to 1.0869 dollars from 1.0970 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound declined to 1.5101 dollars from 1.5150 U.S. dollars in the previous session. The Australian dollar dropped to 0.7340 U.S. dollar from 0.7347 dollar.

The U.S. dollar bought 123.18 Japanese yen, higher than 122.36 yen of the previous session. The U.S. dollar increased to 0.9975 Swiss franc from 0.9904 Swiss franc and went up to 1.3375 Canadian dollars from 1.3344 Canadian dollars. Endit