ADP says June private sector hiring grew slightly below expectations

Hiring by private sector employers in June continued to grow slightly below expectations, human-resources company ADP said.

Private companies added a net 98,000 jobs in June after adding 122,000 jobs in May, ADP said Wednesday morning. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal expected to see 110,000 new private-sector jobs added.

Hiring gains continued to be posted in the education and health sector, which added 48,000 new jobs. Other gains were seen in the financial activities sector and the trade, transportation and utilities category. The natural resources and mining category was a laggard, shedding 5,000 jobs.

“The pace of hiring is telling a story of both supply and demand. We know it’s taking people longer to find work, but there also are signs of labor supply constraints in certain industries. For now, the overall effect is a slowdown in job creation,” said ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson.

The ADP report precedes additional jobs data from the Labor Department Thursday. ADP’s report is based on anonymized payroll data from more than 26 million U.S. employees in the private sector. The Labor Department’s employment report includes both private and public-sector jobs and is based on separate government surveys.

Before ADP’s numbers were released economists had been expecting Thursday’s job report to show 115,000 jobs added in June and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.3%.

Write to Jessica Coacci at [email protected]