Private survey shows steady job gains in February

A private survey released this morning ahead of Friday’s official jobs report from the government shows U.S. businesses added a solid number of jobs in February, indicating higher taxes and looming government spending cuts have yet to slow hiring. Employers added 198,000 jobs in February, according to the survey from ADP. The payroll processor also revised its January hiring figures to show companies added 215,000 jobs, 23,000 more than what had initially been reported. The ADP report is derived from actual payroll data and tracks total nonfarm private employment each month. It suggests that the government’s February jobs report may come in above economists’ forecasts. Analysts expect it will show the economy added 152,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate dipped to 7.8% from 7.9% in January. “Despite the ongoing fiscal uncertainty and the payroll tax hike, the recovery is picking up momentum,” says Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, which helped compile the report, says one encouraging sign is that small businesses are starting to hire more. Earlier in the economic recovery, which began in June 2009, larger companies with 500 or more employees did most of the hiring. Small companies with fewer than 50 employees added 77,000 jobs in February. That increase followed a gain of 123,000 in January for that category, the largest in nearly a year.