ROSELAND, N.J. – Hiring at U.S. companies accelerated last month as nonfarm private employers added a seasonally adjusted 58,000 jobs, more than double August’s revised job growth of 27,000, according to a report today from ADP Employer Services. The August figure was revised downward by 11,000 from the 38,000-job increase reported last month.
September’s employment growth fell short of the 60,000-job increase that was the mean prediction in a Bloomberg News survey of 25 economists. (Their estimates ranged from 30,000 to 130,000.)
September’s “was the third consecutive weak reading and confirms the recent deceleration of employment,” the ADP National Employment Report said. The report is based on an anonymous monthly survey by Macroeconomic Advisers LLC.
Service-sector employment increased by a “moderate” 97,000 jobs last month, despite a 7,000-job decrease in financial services employment the ADP report called “the second consecutive monthly decline after nearly six years of uninterrupted growth.”
Partially offsetting that gain was a 39,000-job decline in the goods-producing sector – including manufacturing and construction – where employment fell for the 10th consecutive month. Manufacturing lost 22,000 jobs in September. Construction lost 20,000 jobs, in its 12th decline in 13 months, for a cumulative job loss of 157,000 construction jobs nationwide since August 2006.
Employment at large businesses nationwide shrank for the fourth consecutive month, falling by 26,000 jobs in September, ADP said. But employment at small and medium-sized businesses advanced by 84,000, as a 109,000 increase in service jobs at smaller firms outweighed a 25,000 decrease in the number of goods-producing positions.
“We are seeing a notch down in job creation over the past few months,” Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc., a New York forecasting firm, told Bloomberg News. The figures “are consistent with a pretty slow-growing economy and one that is losing momentum.”
Meanwhile, layoff announcements by U.S. employers fell to 71,739 last month, a decline of 9.7 percent from August’s 79,459 announcements and 29 percent decline from September 2006’s 100,315, according to a separate report today from Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., Bloomberg News said. The figures are not seasonally adjusted.
A decline in projected firings at automakers and parts suppliers more than offset the increase at financial industry and housing-related firms, the report found.
The financial services sector had the most layoff announcements last month (27,169) – followed by electronics (13,272) and retail (5,716) – and Challenger noted that within the finance industry, 82 percent of the layoff announcements in August and September were at subprime and mortgage lenders.
“The dominos are likely to continue toppling as home values fall and foreclosures continue to climb,” John A. Challenger, the outplacement company’s CEO, said in a statement. “Even if the worst of the crisis is over, as some are saying, we could continue to see heavy job cuts in the financial sector through the end of the year.”
ADP Employment Services – a division of Automatic Data Processing Inc.(NYSE: ADP) – handles payroll for 1 in 6 private-sector employees nationwide. For more information, including the monthly ADP National Employment Report, visit www.adp.com.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a Chicago-based outplacement consulting firm, is the producer of a monthly job-cuts report based on corporate layoff announcements nationwide. To learn more, visit www.challengergray.com.
