US private payrolls grow by 742,000 in April
US private payrolls grew in April, with firms rallying to hike production amid a surge in demand.
Private payrolls rose by 742,000 jobs last month, according to the ADP's national employment report, while data for March was revised higher to show 565,000 jobs being added - a further improvement on the initially reported figure of 517,000.
However, Wednesday's number was still short of economists' expectations for a print of 800,000.
The improvement indicates that the US economy had picked up further steam early on in the second quarter of 2021, driven by significant government aid and the ongoing rollout of the nation's Covid-19 vaccine programme.
"This is better than implied by the Homebase small business employment data, suggesting that larger firms have been more aggressive in hiring for reopening over the past month," said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
"ADP has tended to understate the official payroll numbers since the middle of last year, so this reading is consistent with a headline number Friday of about 1,100K.
"That would be a welcome uptick from the 916K increase in March, but the best is yet to come; we look for much bigger gains in May and - especially - June and July, by which point we expect the whole economy to be fully open."