ADP shows far more cuts than expected. Outplacement firm says job cut announcement ease from 7-year high.
The private sector lost nearly 700,000 jobs in February, according to a report from payroll-processing company Automatic Data Processing released Wednesday, but a separate report showed that employers announced fewer job cuts last month.
The ADP report, which is calculated on payroll data, said the private sector eliminated 697,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis in February. That's an increase of 175,000 job cuts, or 25%, from the 522,000 job cuts reported in January.
Economists were expecting a loss of 630,000 private sector jobs, according to a survey conducted by Briefing.com.
"We probably still have a few million jobs to lose here by the end of the year," said ADP spokesman Joel Prakken in a conference call with reporters.
