The U.S. economy added 154,000 private, non-farm jobs in September, according to the monthly employment report released Wednesday by payroll-management firm ADP and its partner Moody’s Analytics.
The seasonally adjusted number reflects a modest decrease from August’s downwardly-revised gain of 175,000 jobs, and marks a -9.94% decrease from September 2015, when 171,000 new jobs were added.
“The economy is growing at a remarkably stable pace,” Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi said in a conference call this morning. “The (job) gains were broadly distributed across industries and company sizes.”
While the overall employment report was fairly mediocre, for the first time in four months, employment in the construction sector picked up, with 11,000 jobs added in September. Manufacturing shed 6,000 jobs, and the professional and business services sector—which includes architecture and engineering firms—continued to add jobs, creatinng 45,000 new payroll positions during the same period.
About 22 percent (34,000) of the payroll additions in September occurred at businesses with fewer than 50 employees, a figure significantly lower than in previous months. Within that figure, firms employing fewer than 20 individuals accounted for roughly half (17,000) of those additions.
ADP’s national employment report is often used to gauge the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report, which will be released this Friday.
Read the full report here >>
