NEW YORK, May 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. dollar extended losses against its major rivals in late trading on Thursday as market participants digested a slew of key economic data.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, was down 0.25 percent at 97.3753 in late trading.

U.S. trade deficit widened to 50 billion U.S. dollars in March, up 1.5 percent month-on-month, data released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Commerce showed.

The 0.7-billion-dollar increase came with a year-over-year drop in the goods and services deficit of 5.8 billion dollars, or 3.7 percent, from March 2018.

Meanwhile, in the week ending May 4, U.S. initial jobless claims, a rough way to measure layoffs, stood at 228,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week's unrevised level, the Department of Labor reported. Economists polled by MarketWatch estimated the weekly new claims would total 218,000.

In late New York trading, the euro increased to 1.1224 dollars from 1.1192 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound rose to 1.3023 dollars from 1.3005 U.S. dollars in the previous session. The Australian dollar was up to 0.6994 dollar from 0.6989 dollar.

The U.S. dollar bought 109.69 Japanese yen, lower than 110.14 Japanese yen of the previous session. The U.S. dollar was down to 1.0147 Swiss francs from 1.0200 Swiss francs, and it fell to 1.3463 Canadian dollars from 1.3474 Canadian dollars. Enditem