WASHINGTON -- Companies added more workers in December than in the previous month, indicating the U.S. job market was sustaining strength as 2014 drew to a close, according to a private report based on payrolls.
Payroll processor ADP said Wednesday that companies added 241,000 jobs in December, up from 227,000 in November. That suggests Friday's government report on December job gains also will be healthy.
The ADP numbers cover only private businesses and sometimes diverge from the government's more comprehensive report, which includes government agencies.
"Companies are consistently adding jobs," said Thomas Costerg, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank in New York. "The U.S. job market continues to chug along. Consumer spending will accelerate from 2014."
Economists forecast the government's figures will show that employers added 240,000 jobs in December, according to a survey by financial data provider FactSet. The unemployment rate is expected to remain at 5.8 percent.
Hiring was solid across most large industries and company sizes. Goods-producing industries, which include manufacturers and builders, increased head counts by 46,000 last month, the ADP report showed. Hiring in construction rose by 23,000, and factories added 26,000 jobs. Payrolls at service providers increased by 194,000.
Companies employing 500 or more workers added 66,000 jobs. Medium-size businesses, with 50 to 499 employees, took on 70,000 workers, and small companies increased payrolls by 106,000.
"The job market continues to power forward," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pa., said in a statement. Moody's produces the figures with ADP. "Businesses across all industries and sizes are adding to payrolls."
The ADP report is based on data from businesses with almost 24 million workers on their combined payrolls.
Sustained gains in hiring will probably help lay the groundwork for a pickup in wages. Higher earnings, combined with the cheapest fuel costs since 2009, will provide the wherewithal for consumers to increase their spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy.
Strong economic growth has encouraged employers to ramp up hiring. The economy expanded at a 5 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter, the healthiest pace since 2003. And that followed 4.6 percent growth in the April-June quarter.
Employers added nearly 2.7 million new jobs in the first 11 months of last year, the most since 1999. Still, the job market is not yet back to full health. There are about 9.1 million unemployed people, up from about 7.5 million before the recession. And 6.8 million people are working part time but would prefer full-time work, up from just 4.1 million before the downturn.
The December jobs report that's due from the Labor Department on Friday may show payrolls, including government agencies, climbed 240,000 in December after a 321,000 increase a month earlier, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
While FactSet's survey forecast the unemployment rate idling at 5.8 percent, the Bloomberg survey projected it to fall to 5.7 percent, the lowest since 2008.
Some businesses are trimming staff. U.S. Steel Corp., the country's second-biggest producer of the metal, may lay off as many as 756 employees at two plants that make pipes as the oil-price slump cuts spending by energy companies. The Pittsburgh-based company issued legally mandated notices for the decision, which will take effect in early March.
Federal Reserve policymakers last month noted the improvement in the job market that's underpinning growth in the sixth year of the U.S. expansion even as global markets weaken.
"Underutilization of labor resources continues to diminish," the officials said in a statement after their December meeting. They also said they will be "patient" on the timing of the first interest-rate increase since 2006.
Information for this article was contributed by Christopher S. Rugaber of The Associated Press and by Shobhana Chandra and Alex Tanzi of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 01/08/2015