US private sector payrolls accelerate a bit in September, ADP says

Hiring in the US grew more quickly than anticipated in September, leading some economists to bump up their forecasts ahead of the monthly non-farm payrolls report that was scheduled for release on the following Friday.

Consultancy ADP's survey showed that private firms added 749,000 people their payrolls during the month.

That was more than the 428,000 gain reported for August and ahead of economists' median forecast for an increase of 650,000.

Nevertheless, as Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Macroeconomics pointed out, the ADP measure of hiring had been running "substantially" beneath the official data in recent months before narrowing consistently.

His guess therefore was that the Department of Labor would report a 950,000 rise in non-farm payrolls on Friday, which would however still mark a slowdown from the 1.481m seen in July and the 1.027m registered in August.

In any case, there was one important caveat - a sharper slowdown might be looming ahead by as soon as October.

"But this is far from certain, given the deviation between the ADP and official numbers since Covid struck.

"Looking ahead, the daily Homebase employment data point to significantly weaker payrolls in October, and perhaps even the first outright decline since April."