But the US currency was weak against the euro and yen after the US government released a worse-than-expected snapshot of the US job market, which sparked a dollar self-off that reversed gains made Thursday, they said.

But the demand for the greenback was strong due to higher dollar-buying sentiment driven by higher import payments when the dollar was weak against major currencies, dealers said.

The dollar traded at 58.4750-58.4900 to the taka in line with its previous closing on Thursday, foreign exchange dealers of leading commercial banks said.

Trading, however, was depressed due to holiday in most international markets. The volume of foreign currency trading was also comparatively lower, they said.

"Importers and traders could not deal with their foreign trade partners as most international foreign exchange markets remained closed due to weekend holiday", dealers of a private commercial banks said.

Against major currencies, the dollar weakened largely due to the job losses revealed in the July jobs' report, released by the Labour Department on Friday morning, dealers said. They said the euro had climbed to 1.1268 dollars on Friday in New York from 1.1233 dollars late Thursday while the US dollar also fell against the yen, dropping to 120.13 yen, compared with 120.49 yen late Thursday.

Market participants said the jobs' report-which showed employers shed 44,000 jobs from the workforce in July, bringing six months of total job losses to 486,000-tempered optimism the economy was rebounding.

Many traders had believed the economy was showing firm signs of a rebound from the Iraq war malaise prior to the release of the jobs data, dealers said.

Traders said they are now casting their focus forward to next Thursday's weekly snapshot on weekly unemployment claims.

The dollar was quoted in late New York trade at 1.5383 Swiss francs, unmoved from Thursday while the dollar was at 0.7000 pounds sterling from 0.6976 pounds, dealers said.