Private sector employment growth was a bit better than expected in March, but health care and construction continued to provide nearly all the momentum, payrolls processing company ADP reported Wednesday.
Job growth totaled 62,000 for the month, down just 4,000 from February’s upwardly revised level but above the Dow Jones consensus for 39,000. ADP’s report does not include government employees.
Like February’s report, two sectors essentially provided all the gains.
Education and health services contributed 58,000 — identical to the February total — while construction added 30,000. The health services total was held back in the prior month due to a since-resolved strike at Kaiser Permanente that sidelined more than 30,000 workers in Hawaii and California.
“We’ve seen two consecutive months of pretty steady job growth, but most of it has been in health care,” Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, told CNBC. “That’s really the story. Health care is transforming the labor market.”
Elsewhere, information services added 16,000 jobs while natural resources and mining contributed 11,000 and leisure and hospitality saw a gain of 7,000.
On the downside, trade, transportation and utilities lost 58,000 workers while manufacturing was off 11,000.
In an economy dominated by the services industry, March saw a rare balance in job creation — 30,000 for goods producers against 32,000 for services.
Businesses with fewer than 50 employees also dominated hiring, adding 85,000 jobs, while medium-sized establishments lost 20,000 and large firms, with 500 or more employees, reported a decline of 4,000.
This was the second consecutive month that small businesses led, a shift Richardson said may be the sector “playing catch-up” as well as inflation impacts and “that second or third job that people need to keep up with price levels that might be coming from the small-firm sector.”
Wage growth for those staying in their jobs held steady at 4.5%, while job changers saw a gain of 6.6%, up 0.3 percentage point from February.
The report comes two days before the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its nonfarm payrolls report. The Wall Street forecast is for a gain of 59,000 following February’s reported loss of 92,000. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 4.4%.
In other economic news Wednesday, retail sales posted a solid gain in February, up 0.6% after falling 0.1% in January. The figure was better than the 0.5% forecast. Excluding autos, sales rose 0.5%, vs. the outlook for 0.3%.
Also, the ISM manufacturing index posted a slightly better than expected reading at 52.7, representing the percentage of firms reporting expansion in March. However, the prices index saw a massive gain, hitting 78.3, a 7.8-point surge to the highest since June 2022.
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