US Labour Data Beats Forecasts as Health and Construction Sectors Propping Up Activity

New York — Kompas.com — Private-sector hiring in the United States in February was slightly better than forecasts. According to the ADP report released on Wednesday (4 March 2025), private employers in the US added 63,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis. The figure was well above January’s revised 11,000 jobs and exceeded market expectations of 48,000 jobs. However, job growth appeared uneven. Most of the job gains came from two main sectors. Outside those two sectors, growth tended to be stagnant. By contrast, the professional and business services sector shed 30,000 jobs. The manufacturing sector declined by 5,000 jobs, while trade, transportation and utilities fell by 1,000. Aside from the information sector which recorded an 11,000-job increase, there was little significant movement in other sectors. Manufacturing itself remained weak even as the government seeks to boost domestically produced industries through tariff policies. On wages, pay for workers who remained in the same job rose by 4.5 percent, the same as last month. However, wage growth for workers changing jobs slowed to 6.3 percent, or 0.3 percentage point lower than January. This places the incentive to switch jobs at its lowest level since ADP began recording the data. “We are seeing solid hiring gains and steady wage growth, especially for workers who stay in their jobs,” said ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson. “However, because hiring is concentrated in only a few sectors, our data show there are no broad wage gains from job switching,” she added.