The private sector added 204,000 jobs last month, according to this morning’s ADP National Employment Report, slightly lower than the 215,000 jobs predicted by economists.
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“August marks the fifth straight month of employment gains above 200,000, continuing an encouraging trend for the U.S. labor market,” says Carlos Rodriguez, president and chief executive officer of payroll processing company ADP, which produces the report with Moody’s Analytics.
Last month’s report was revised downward to 212,000 jobs. While August and July saw slower-than-expected job creation, and fewer than June’s blockbuster 297,000 jobs, both were in line with the monthly average for 2014.
“Our current outlook is probably the most upbeat we’ve come up with the past seven years,” says Mike Schenk, chief economist of the Credit Union National Association. He tells Fortune that the economy will expand by about 3.5 percent in 2015, and that unemployment will continue to decline.
The PayScale Index predicts a 1.9 percent growth in wages for the third quarter of 2014.
Tomorrow’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to show gains of 225,000 jobs and a decline in the unemployment rate from 6.2 percent to 6.1 percent.
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