WASHINGTON – Companies in the U.S. added 91,000 workers to payrolls in August, according to a private survey.
The increase followed a revised 109,000 gain the prior month, according to data from ADP Employer Services. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for an advance of 100,000.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
The economy needs to generate more jobs on a sustained basis in order to bring down unemployment, which has been at 9 percent or higher in 25 of the past 27 months. A Labor Department report in two days is projected to show businesses added 100,000 jobs in August, down from a 154,000 increase in July, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
“The labor market continues to struggle,” Sean Incremona, a senior economist at 4Cast Inc. in New York, said before the report. “There is too much uncertainty that is restraining firms from committing resources to hiring.”
The median forecast was based on a survey of 37 economists. Projections ranged from gains of 5,000 to 140,000.
Stock-index futures held earlier gains after the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index maturing next month rose 1 percent to 1,216.7 at 8:36 a.m. in New York. Treasury securities were little changed.
No Verizon Effect
The ADP report said its figures didn’t reflect the labor dispute that affected roughly 45,000 workers at New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. The workers were on strike for two weeks before returning to their posts Aug. 22 under the terms of their previous contract.
Over the previous six reports, ADP’s initial figure was closest to the Labor Department’s first estimate of private payrolls in February, when it understated the gain in jobs by 5,000. The estimate was least accurate in June, when it overestimated the increase in employment by 100,000.
Last month, ADP’s initial figures showed a 114,000 gain in company payrolls for July, while the Labor Department’s data showed a 154,000 increase.
Today’s ADP report showed an increase of 11,000 workers in goods-producing industries last month, which include manufacturers and construction companies. Employment at factories dropped by 4,000.
Manufacturing Cools
Orders to manufacturers, a pillar of the expansion, contracted last month for the first time since June 2009, the month the recession ended, according to figures from the Institute for Supply Management
Service providers added 80,000 workers in August, the figures showed.
Companies employing more than 499 workers added 3,000 jobs. Medium-sized businesses, with 50 to 499 employees, increased payrolls by 30,000 and employment at small companies climbed by 58,000, ADP said.
Another report today showed employers in August announced more job cuts than a year earlier. Planned firings climbed 47 percent from August 2010 to 51,114, according to figures released today by Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Job-cut announcements were led by the government and financial and retail industries.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, speaking at the annual central bank symposium last week in Jackson Hole, Wyo., said the Fed still had tools at its disposal to stimulate the economy even as he declined to specify which measures it might use.
Bernanke’s View
“It is clear that the recovery from the crisis has been much less robust than we had hoped,” Bernanke said. “Economic growth has, for the most part, been at rates insufficient to achieve sustained reductions in unemployment.”
Job cuts have accelerated as recent data showed the economy slowed more than previously reported in the first half of the year. Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender, will eliminate about 3,500 jobs this quarter to focus “on what we can control” amid financial-market turmoil following the first U.S. credit downgrade in history, Chief Executive Officer Brian T. Moynihan said on Aug. 19. “We owe it to our customers and our shareholders to remain competitive, efficient and manage our expenses carefully.”
The Labor Department figures on Sept. 2 will also show the jobless rate held at 9.1 percent last month, according to the Bloomberg survey median.
Total payrolls are forecast to increase by 70,000 after a 117,000 gain in July, according to the Bloomberg survey.
The ADP report is based on data from about 340,000 companies with more than 21 million workers on payrolls. Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in St. Louis produces the data with ADP.
