Australian dollar rises after strong jobs data

The Australian dollar rose against most major currencies on Thursday, following strong economic data, while investors parse monetary policy decisions by several global central banks.

The Australian economy added 366.1K jobs during the past month, beating forecasts of 203K jobs.

Australia's unemployment rate fell to 4.6% in November from 5.2% in October, beating forecasts of a drop to 5%.

The Fed kept the interest rate between zero and 0.25% unchanged, and to reduce asset purchases by $30 billion per month, starting in January, double of what was previously announced of $15 billion per month.

The European Central Bank reveled its plan to end the bond-purchasing program worth 1.85 trillion euros ($2.2 trillion) by the end of March, but decided to continue with the asset purchase program launched before the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bank of England surprised the markets after it decided to raise interest rates by 15 basis points to 0.25%, in the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.

As of 16:26 GMT, AUD/USD rose 0.3% to 0.7194.