US Private Payrolls Gains Slow in August

U.S. private payrolls increased by 132,000 jobs in August after rising 270,000 in July, the ADP National Employment Report showed Wednesday.

The ADP report was suspended for June and July while the company revamped the methodology for the data after a poor record predicting the private payrolls count in the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report.

The report is now jointly developed with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. It now includes a new wages measure. Historical data for the past 12 years has been benchmarked.

The report was published ahead of the BLS' more comprehensive and closely watched employment report for August on Friday. According to a Reuters survey of economists, private payrolls likely increased by 300,000 jobs in August after rising by 471,000 in July.

With no employment gains in the government sector anticipated, that would leave overall nonfarm payrolls gains at 300,000. The economy created 528,000 jobs in July.

Demand for labor remains strong despite aggressive interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve to tame inflation.

Government data on Tuesday showed that there were 11.2 million job openings on the last business day of July, with two openings for every unemployed person.