By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- The rebound in the U.S. labor market appears to have run out of steam in August.
The private sector added only 428,000 net new jobs in the month, according to a report released on Wednesday by payrolls processor ADP. That's less than half of the 950,000 expected, according to consensus forecasts.
“The August job postings demonstrate a slow recovery,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Job gains are minimal, and businesses across all sizes and sectors have yet to come close to their pre-COVID-19 employment levels.”
The news is a bad omen for the official government labor market report for August, which is due on Friday. It's the second month in a row that the ADP report has come in way short of expectations, albeit ADP revised up its July number by some 45,000 to show net job growth of 212,000 that month.