By Will Feuer

Hiring among U.S. private-sector employers picked up steam again in April, according to data from the ADP National Employment Report released Wednesday.

Employment in the nonfarm private sector rose by 296,000 last month, compared with a gain of 142,000 in March, ADP said. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal expected private employment to rise by 133,000.

March's reading was revised down from an initial estimate of 145,000 to 142,000.

Annual wage growth slowed slightly in April to 6.7% from 6.9% in March, according to the survey. Pay data is based on the salaries of almost 10 million individual employees over a 12-month period.

"The slowdown in pay growth gives the clearest signal of what's going on in the labor market right now," ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson said. "Employers are hiring aggressively while holding pay gains in check as workers come off the sidelines. Our data also shows fewer people are switching jobs."

The ADP estimate is based on aggregated payroll data of more than 25 million U.S. workers and is independent from U.S. Labor Department official data. The ADP series can diverge considerably from the Labor Department's data.

Employment gains were driven by small- and medium-sized businesses, which added 121,000 and 122,000 jobs, respectively. Large businesses registered a gain of 47,000 jobs in April.

By sector, services providers created 229,000 jobs, with the leisure-and-hospitality sector adding 154,000 payrolls. But financial activities lost 28,000 jobs and payrolls in professional-and-business services fell by 16,000, continuing a contraction in those sectors from March.

Goods producers added 67,000 jobs, with 53,000 new payrolls in construction and 52,000 in natural resources and mining. Manufacturing lost 38,000 jobs, though.

The U.S. Labor Department is scheduled to release its employment report Friday. Economists polled by the Journal expect nonfarm payrolls to increase by 180,000 in April, and the unemployment rate is forecast to edge up to 3.6%.

Write to Will Feuer at Will.Feuer@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 03, 2023 08:45 ET (12:45 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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