BERLIN — The 16-nation euro rose Friday against the U.S. dollar as Washington reported record-high unemployment while Germany, Europe's largest economy, saw its number of jobless drop.
In morning European trading the euro bought $1.3997, up from $1.3962 in late New York trading on Thursday. The British pound rose to $1.6048 from $1.5953 the day before, while the dollar dropped slightly to purchase 96.37 Japanese yen from 96.91 yen in New York.
The U.S. Labor Department on Thursday reported the tally of newly laid-off people requesting jobless benefits fell last week. Still, the number of people continuing to receive unemployment benefits rose to 6.78 million — the largest total on records dating to 1967 and the 17th straight record-high week.
At the same time, Germany reported that the country's number of jobless dropped 127,000 in May to 3.458 million for a 0.4 percentage-point decline in the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent.
