ADP: U.S. Only Gained A Disappointing 428,000 Private-Sector Jobs in August

Private-sector employment went up by 428,000 jobs last month, said the ADP National Employment Report. That’s an improvement over the previous month’s 167,000 jobs, but still well below expectations. A survey of economists by Dow Jones had predicted a 1.17 million increase.

“The August job postings demonstrate a slow recovery,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Job gains are minimal, and businesses across all sizes and sectors have yet to come close to their pre-COVID-19 employment levels.”

The jobs report, produced by the ADP Institute and Moody’s Analytics, is the kickoff event leading up to Friday’s official U.S. Labor Department jobs report for August. That will show how many jobs the U.S. economy added or lost in both the private and public sectors.

The ADP only covers the private sector (“nonfarm private employment each month on a seasonally-adjusted basis”). The U.S. government’s report is expected to show 1.4 million jobs created in August, Reuters reported, adding that this “would leave nonfarm payrolls about 11.5 million below their pre-pandemic level.”

ADP said that big business led the creation of jobs in August, as companies with more than 500 employees added 298,000 workers. Medium-sized businesses were next with 79,000, while companies with fewer than 50 workers grew by only 52,000.

The strongest sector for August growth was “service-providing” with 389,000 jobs, said ADP.

The addition of 167,000 private-sector jobs in July was way down from June, when the numbers leaped up by 2.4 million, according to that month’s ADP National Employment Report.

“The labor market recovery slowed in the month of July,” said Yildirmaz when that month’s report was released. He noted at the time that the slowdown was hitting companies of all sizes and in all sectors.

In a report issued on Tuesday (Sept. 1), the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicted that U.S. employment will increase by six million jobs over the decade from 2019 through 2029, going from 163 million to 169 million in that timeframe. That predicted annual growth rate would be slower than during the economy’s recovery from the Great Recession.