Sheets of U.S. one dollar bills roll off the press at the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Washington, D.C.
Good news on the Canadian and U.S. jobs front helped buoy the loonie at the close of the week.
The Canadian dollar finished the day up 0.13 of a cent at $1.0341 (U.S.) on Friday after having been up more than a penny earlier in the session on the strength of a Statistics Canada report showing the economy pumped out a surprisingly strong 58,300 jobs April.
Still the loonie was down nearly 2 cents on the week after a sharp, 1.05 cents fall on Thursday.
Almost all of the job gains were in Ontario and a big portion of them part-time. The impressive gain in the headline number was enough to trim the unemployment rate to 7.6 per cent, down 0.1 per cent from the previous month and matching the lowest jobless level since the early months of the recession.
April's gains brought the year-over-year increase in employment to 283,000.
Economists had expected a more modest 20,000 gain in jobs following a weak March, although they left themselves open to an upside surprise as a result of possible one-time hiring for the federal election.
"April's headline result is certainly impressive, and suggests that the Canadian recovery is managing to grind forward despite the many slings and arrows flung at the North American economy in recent months," said Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets.
"However, the details were not quite as impressive and jobs may have got a least a small temporary boost from the election," Mr. Porter said. "As a result, this likely won't make much impact on the Bank of Canada's view of the world."
In the U.S., employers added more than 244,000 jobs in April for the third straight month, the biggest hiring spree in five years. But the unemployment rate rose to 9 per cent in part because some people resumed looking for work.
The strong U.S. jobs report gave the U.S. dollar a lift Friday, while a report from a German newspaper saying Greece might withdraw from the euro bloc drove that currency lower.
Friday's bump for the greenback followed a long decline in which it hit multi-year lows against several currencies earlier this week, partly on signals from the Federal Reserve that it will keep interest rates low for at least the next few months in order to support the U.S. economy.
Other central banks around the world have been raising rates or signalling they may do so to counter rising food and energy prices. Higher rates tend to support currencies.
Worries about the pace of the U.S. recovery had grown over the past few days following a run of soft economic data. Commodity prices took the brunt of the selloff amid worries of waning demand for crude, metals and raw materials.
On Friday, gold bullion added $10.20 to $1,491.60 an ounce, while the July copper contract lost 2 cents to $3.98 a pound.
But crude oil continued its fall, down $2.62 at $97.18 a barrel, and extending a week-long selloff on investor concern that slowing U.S. economic growth will undermine demand.
Crude, which hit a 2 1/2-year high of almost $115 late last week, tumbled nearly 7 per cent Thursday on a sharp rise in the U.S. dollar and a jump in applications for unemployment benefits in the U.S.