American businesses added a solid but unspectacular 182,000 jobs in October, according to a private survey.
Advertisement
Private businesses placed another 182,000 workers on their payrolls in October after a 190,000 hike in September, ADP Research Institute said on Wednesday.
ADP said that manufacturing employment fell by 2,000 on net in October, declining for the sixth time year-to-date.
“We suspect the strength of the dollar remains a constraint on factory payrolls, along with lower petroleum prices negatively impacting on oil drilling and related equipment”, Raymond Stone of Stone McCarthy Research wrote in a research report. The official government report released last month showed the labor market expanded by only 142,000 jobs in September, well shy of the 200,000 positions originally reported by ADP and still short of this month’s revised 190,000 additions.
Recently, the ADP figures have been rosier than the government’s. In September, the small subset of firms with at least 1,000 employees added 100,000 jobs alone, and that huge jump in large-firm employment had alarmed analysts, as smaller companies have historically led monthly post-Great Recession gains.
The ADP report comes ahead of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employment situation report, due out Friday morning. By that measure, Friday’s NFP would show 150,000 jobs created.
Goods-producing industries, which include manufacturers and builders, increased headcounts by 24,000, the ADP report showed.
Others aren’t almost as comfortable with a payroll number south of 200,000.
The unemployment rate in October is expected to tick down to 5%, the lowest since 2008.
Advertisement
Federal Reserve policymakers have hinted they could raise a key interest rate in December and that the jobs reports the next two months will be a major factor in their decision.
