* Dollar index slips from seven-week highs as payrolls report awaited

* Euro finds its footing after slip on dovish ECB comments

* Canadian dollar among worst performers this week

* China trade data underpins Aussie

By Lisa Twaronite and Ian Chua

TOKYO/SYDNEY, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar inched away from a seven-week high on Friday as investors booked some profits ahead of the keenly-awaited U.S. jobs report, while the euro found firmer footing after it was unsettled by dovish comments from the European Central Bank.

The dollar index last stood at 80.920, down 0.1 on the day, having retreated from a high of 81.187 on Thursday, its loftiest level since late November.

Traders said the greenback could easily rebound if non-farm payrolls surprised on the strong side and fuelled expectations that the Federal Reserve will scale back its bond-buying stimulus more quickly.

Economists polled by Reuters forecast that employers probably added 196,000 jobs, down from 203,000 in November, while the jobless rate likely held at a five-year low of 7.0 percent.

On the other hand, a downside surprise could bolster the yen, and sideline Japanese exporters, who sell dollars to repatriate overseas earnings, market participants say.

"The exporters are not in a rush, and are only going to be doing the minimal operations at the fixing. They're fine -- they're hedged on the downside," said a trader at a Japanese bank on Tokyo.

From September onward, exporters have been hedged between 95/98 yen, while in November/December, some of the larger exporters hedged at 100/102 yen, she said.

Against the yen, the greenback edged up slightly to 104.92 , but was still shy of Thursday's high of 105.05 yen and a five-year high of 105.45 yen hit earlier last week as the improving U.S. economic outlook heightened expectations that the Fed will speed up its stimulus reduction.

Janet Yellen, set to take over as head of the Fed next month, is "hopeful" that U.S. economic growth will accelerate in 2014 to reach 3 percent or more and persistently low inflation will move up toward the central bank's target, she was cited saying in a Time magazine interview published online on Thursday.

"Most of my colleagues on the Fed's policymaking committee and I are hopeful that the first digit (of GDP growth) could be 3 rather than 2," Yellen said in the interview.

The euro rose as high as $1.3616 and was last slightly up on the day at $1.3611, moving away from a one-month low of $1.3548 touched overnight and back toward a two-year high of $1.3894 set at the end of last month.