Private-Sector Jobs Increased by 32,000 in April

Payroll services company Automatic Data Processing has released its monthly figures on employment based on private-sector payroll information. This is the monthly report that Wall Street and many news organizations look to every month on the eve of the governmental release of employment figures for the previous month.

The news from ADP is that 32,000 new jobs were created in April, predominantly in the services sector and mostly by medium to large businesses. Small businesses were only responsible for 1,000 of the 32,000 total jobs added.

"Today's report is very encouraging," ADP CEO Gary Butler said in a statement. "The challenging economic environment appears to have stabilized. I am cautiously optimistic that increasing economic activity along with the recently enacted legislation offering immediate incentives to employers for jobs creation (the HIRE Act) will lead to continuing growth in private-sector employment."

ADP estimated that the services sector grew by 50,000 jobs in April, but those numbers were offset by an 18,000-job decline in the goods-producing sector.

"While construction employment dropped 49,000, manufacturing employment, in an encouraging sign, rose 29,000, the third consecutive monthly increase," Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, which helps produce the ADP report, said in the same statement. "Large businesses, defined as those with 500 or more workers, saw employment increase by 14,000 and employment among medium-size businesses, defined as those with between 50 and 499 workers, increased by 17,000."

Numbers on layoffs have shown steady decreases for the past two months, according to outplacement services company Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks announced layoffs in the United States. In March, there were 67,611 announced layoffs, compared with 38,326 in April, for a decrease of about 43 percent.

The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its April report on May 7. Many economists expect the employment numbers to be even more positive than they were in March, according to an article on CNBC.com:

"Economists are forecasting an increase in nonfarm payrolls of about 185,000 when the Labor Department reports the April unemployment numbers Friday, higher than the 162,000 added in March."

"Unlike the estimate of total establishment employment to be released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics ... today's ADP Report does not include any federal hiring in April for the 2010 Census," Prakken said. "For this reason it is reasonable to expect that Friday's figure for nonfarm total employment reported by the BLS will be stronger than today's estimate for nonfarm private employment in the ADP Report."