Private payrolls expanded by 568,000 last month from 374,000 in August and against the 430,000 predicted for September by economists, ADP data showed.
"The labour market recovery continues to make progress despite a marked slowdown from the 748,000 job pace in the second quarter,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson, said in a news release. “Leisure and hospitality remains one of the biggest beneficiaries to the recovery, yet hiring is still heavily impacted by the trajectory of the pandemic, especially for small firms.”
The ADP data came ahead of Friday’s scheduled US non-farm payrolls report for September from the Labor Department, which will show employment in both the private and government sectors. Economists have forecast a total jobs growth of 473,000 payrolls for last month.
ADP’s Richardson said if bottlenecks for hiring in the marketplace eased further from improving health conditions tied to the COVID-19 Delta variant, it should set “the stage for solid job gains in the coming months”.
Nearly two years into the COVID-19 crisis, restoring job growth remains one of the main concerns of US policymakers.
The United States lost more than 21 million jobs between March and April 2020, at the height of business lockdowns forced by the coronavirus. More than 7 million of those jobs have yet to return, officials say.