Private employers in the U.S. added jobs in the first month of 2011, completing a full year of consecutive monthly increases and boosting hopes that the labor market is gaining strength, according to Reuters. On Wednesday, ADP Employer Services reported that the private sector added 187,000 jobs to payrolls in January after adding a downwardly revised 247,000 jobs in the last month of 2010. The increase surpassed economists’ forecast for payrolls to gain 145,000, and the 12 consecutive payroll increases marked the longest continuous stretch in about five years.
The data from ADP comes ahead of the government’s official employment summary for January that is to be released at the end of the week, and economists are expecting a smaller increase in the official figure. Both the initial and revised data from ADP for the previous month far exceeded the official tally, so analysts and markets are skeptical that the latest strong results will correlate with strong official data. Despite the tempered expectations, John Canally of LPL Financial said that the string of consecutive increases is a major indication that the U.S. is “not going to see any more layoffs.”