The private sector of the United States added 212.000 jobs last month. The figure is smaller than expected and is a decline as fell from January’s revised figure. A payrolls processor report also announced Wednesday that some sectors of the economy are dealing with a slowed employment growth.
The study was carried out by the ADP National Employment Report, together with Moody’s Analytics. It revealed that a total of 212,000 private-sector jobs were added last month. The forecast for this period was of 220.000 new jobs in the United States.
Private payrolls for January were revised to 250,000, as the original reported figure was 213,000.
The document published Wednesday showed that most jobs were created in economic sectors such as goods producing, manufacturing and services, but the increase was moderate. It also indicated a slowing down in some ares. For example, service-providing employment grew by 181,000 jobs in February, while in January it stood at 206,000 new jobs in the sector.
A steeper decline was observed in the trade, transportation and utilities field, where only 31.000 new jobs were created, compared to January’s 50,000. Professional business also slowed.
The pace was set again by small businesses, where 94.000 new positions were added. Medium-sized companies, with up to 499 employees, dropped significantly from 106,000 to 63,000.
Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics chief economist, said that the slowing down of the job growth is merely a consequence of the very high pace it showed in the last months and that job gains will be observed in the future months in all sectors. The expert suggested that the collapse in oil prices has begun to press on energy-related employment, writes Reuters.
The U.S. Labor Department’s will follow the figures published by the ADP National Employment Report with a more elaborate non-farm payrolls centralized information on Friday. This report will include figures on both public and private-sector employment.
Unemployment is also expected to go down in February, but only with a 0.1 per cent, from January’s 5.7 percent. Analysts said that the private-sector employment perspective is still satisfactory, in spite of the slowing down of the jobs growth. Experts expect that the non-farm payrolls report will also bring good news for the economy.
Daniel Silver, economist at JPMorgan in New York, said:”The ADP report reveals that payrolls continue to increase at a strong pace in February.” Silver added winter weather had no detrimental impact on the growth, especially in construction, a sector where payrolls remained stable in February, with 31.000 new jobs created in February, the same as in the previous month.
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