US private sector hiring jumps in September
Hiring by US companies rebounded unexpectedly in September, hitting a seven-month high on the back of strong job creation in the service sector, according to monthly survey released Wednesday.
The jobs report from the payrolls firm ADP overshot estimates, as many economists expected the gain to be tamped down by the impact of Hurricane Florence on the US mid-Atlantic states.
The gain was boosted by a 184,000 increase in jobs in the services sector, but the goods sector jumped 46,000 -- double the gain in the prior month -- almost all concentrated in construction, the survey showed.
The report is scrutinized ahead of the government's official employment report, which is due Friday and which economists project will show a gain of 184,000 non-farm jobs and a drop in the unemployment rate to 3.8 percent from the current 3.9 percent. However, the two surveys are frequently out of step.
"The labor market continues to impress," said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. "Both the goods and services sectors soared."
In the services sector -- a key driver of the US economy -- professional and business services gained 70,000, while health services jumped 37,000, and trade, transportation and utilities added another 30,000.
"The job market continues to power forward," Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, which helped produce the report,, said in the statement. "At the current pace of job creation, unemployment will fall into the low 3%'s by this time next year."
Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics said he was surprised not to see more of a slowdown from the impact of the hurricane that hit in mid-September and caused widespread damage and flooding in North Carolina.
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