The dollar hit a seven-week high against the yen on Thursday, building on gains made after the Federal Reserve suggested earlier in the week that it may not be finished raising interest rates. Dealers said the dollar would likely remain well supported ahead of a non-farms payrolls report on Friday that is expected to show strong U.S. jobs growth in January and reinforce a case for more dollar-boosting rate rises. "We've seen a big wave of dollar buybacks since the Fed," said Mitsuo Imaizumi, a senior forex trader at Daiwa Securities SMBC. "And with expectations of a reading as high as 300,000 in Friday's payrolls its hard to sell the dollar today." By 0545 GMT, the dollar was fetching 118.55 yen , up 0.4 percent on the day and its highest level since Dec. 14. It had climbed 0.8 percent in the previous session. Automatic buy orders around 118.30 yen had added momentum to the dollar's rise, traders said. The Japanese currency fell to a seven-week low against the euro of 142.78 yen on electronic trading platform EBS. The euro was at $1.2040 , down from around $1.2065 in late New York trade on Wednesday, when the single currency fell around 0.8 percent. The euro has dropped around 2 percent from a four-month high of $1.2325 hit on electronic trading platform EBS last week. The median forecast in a Reuters poll of economists is for the U.S. non-farm payrolls data to show 240,000 jobs were added in January, up from 108,000 in December. Forecasts for the highly volatile data range from 170,000 to 300,000. Traders were also looking ahead to a European Central Bank meeting later on Thursday, where the ECB is widely expected to leave its benchmark refinancing rate at 2.25 percent, although some analysts see an outside chance of a rate rise. After the meeting, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet is slated to speak at 1330 GMT. Trichet said last week that recent data backed a view that growth in the euro zone was picking up, while other ECB board members have struck a more cautious tone.