Survey Shows Added Jobs but Slowed Growth in September

A survey by ADP shows that U.S. businesses added 162,000 jobs in September 2012 but growth slowed from the prior month from 189,000 jobs. However, the increase for the month was better than expected despite not being enough to push down the unemployment rate considerably. Around 100,000 new jobs are required every month to keep up with the working-age population while twice that amount is needed to significantly lower the unemployment rate.

“While the economy isn’t plunging into recession, it still isn’t creating enough jobs to drive the unemployment rate lower either,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

The ADP survey does not cover government employment and usually diverges from Labor Department figures. For instance, in August, the government reported only 103,000 new jobs in the private sector and the estimate for the September count is 111,000 new jobs with a slightly higher unemployment rate of 8.2 percent. For September, ADP reported 144,000 new service jobs and 18,000 new manufacturing, construction, and other goods-producing jobs. Economic growth has slowed considerably from Q4 of 2011, dropping from 4.1 percent during that period to just 1.3 percent during Q2 2012. Estimates place economic growth for the remainder of the year to be approximately 2 percent.