On Thursday the greenback approached three-month lows versus rivals, as recent batch of soft U.S. data continued to spur uncertainty over the strength of the U.S. economy.
Markets now expect upcoming U.S. jobless claims numbers.
United States payroll processing firm ADP said on Wednesday that U.S. non-farm private employment rose by 169,000 last month, below expectations for an increase of 200,000. The news put the greenback under pressure. Investors were now looking ahead to Friday's employment report for further indications on the health of the U.S. job market.
The economy has slowed since the start of the year, as recent reports indicated, prompting many investors to push back expectations on the timing of an initial rate hike by the Federal Reserve.
EUR/USD rose 0.19% to two-and-a-half month highs of 1.1372. The single currency found some support after Greece made a small interest payment to the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday, although European lenders crushed hopes for a cash-for-reforms deal before a bigger installment Athens is expected to pay next week.
Earlier Thursday, official data showed that German factory orders rose 0.9% in March, disappointing expectations for an increase of 1.5%, after a 0.9% fall the previous month.
The greenback was lower against the yen with USD/JPY dipping 0.23% to 119.17 and also lower versus the Swiss franc with USD/CHF declining 0.93% to 0.9074.
Also on Thursday, the Swiss National Bank reported that its foreign currency reserves slid to 521.9 billion Swiss francs last month from 522.4 billion Swiss francs in March, whose figure was revised from a previously estimated 522.3 billion Swiss francs.
The commodity-exposed Australian and New Zealand dollars were lower, with AUD/USD down 0.20% to 0.7954 and NZD/USD losing 0.28% to hit 0.7475.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics earlier said that the number of employed people declined by 2,900 in April, compared to expectations for an increase of 5,000. The change in the number of employed people in March was revised to a 48,200 gain from a previously estimated 37,700 rise. The data also showed that Australia's unemployment rate rose to 6.2% last month from 6.1% in March, in line with expectations.
USD/CAD rose 0.12% to trade at 1.2060.
