The private sector added the highest amount of seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs since February in September, according to an ADP National Employment report from Wednesday.
The ADP report, done in association with Moody’s analytics, often tracks with the official Bureau of Labor statistics report, which is due Friday, and showed 230,000 jobs were added.
The figure is welcome news to President Trump and Republicans, who hope a strong economy will stave off a Democratic takeover in November’s election.
“The job market continues to power forward. Employment gains are broad-based across industries and company sizes,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “At the current pace of job creation, unemployment will fall into the low 3%’s by this time next year,” he added.
According to ADP, the biggest boost in job gains were in medium businesses that employed between 50-499 people, which saw an increase of 99,000 jobs. Larger businesses added 75,000 jobs, while smaller ones added 56,000.
The vast majority of the new jobs — 184,000, or 80 percent — were in the service sector. The remaining 46,000 came from jobs producing goods, bolstered by 34,000 jobs in construction and 7,000 manufacturing jobs.
“The professional and business services industry and construction served as key engines of growth,” noted Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute, which analyzes the data from the payroll provider. “They added almost half of all new jobs this month.”
Since February, when new jobs reached 241,000, the monthly jobs figures in the ADP report varied between 170,000 and a peak of 211,000.