Private companies in the United States added 167,000 jobs in July amid a resurgence of COVID-19 cases, payroll data company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) reported on Wednesday.
The figure, well below the forecast of 1 million by economists surveyed by Dow Jones, indicates a much slower employment growth compared with June, when a revised 4.3 million jobs had been created in the private sector.
"We have seen the slowdown impact businesses across all sizes and sectors," said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute, which produced the report in collaboration with Moody's Analytics.
Large firms added 129,000 workers, small companies added 63,000, but medium businesses reduced 25,000 employees.
Private companies in the United States slashed a revised 302,000 jobs in March amid COVID-19 shutdowns, the first private payroll contraction in a decade. In April, private sector cut nearly 20 million jobs.
The ADP report comes two days before the crucial monthly employment report released by the U.S. Department of Labor, which will include employment data from both the private sector and the government.
